


The Curse

by Wolfarella



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (they're versatile?), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Biting, Blood Kink, Bottom Chuck Hansen, Bottom Raleigh Becket, Drama, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:37:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 52,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfarella/pseuds/Wolfarella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck Hansen died when Striker Eureka blew up. Only, he didn't stay dead. A few months after the Breach was closed, he showed up on Raleigh’s doorstep, a ghost in a tattered Drivesuit. His new state demanded constant care, care that Raleigh felt obligated to provide, but even after moving Chuck out to Alaska in the hopes of getting him away from people who might become his victims, Raleigh isn't surprised to learn that looking after a vampire is not an easy position to be in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I don’t even know what to say about this. I made a silly AU gifset because of Rob Kazinsky on True Blood, and I came up with this idea out of nowhere. I probably wouldn’t have even written this fic if not for the interest so many people showed in the idea, so I only hope (hope hope HOPE) I’m not disappointing anyone here with this. The title comes from the album of the same name by one of my favorite bands, Atreyu, and all of the lyrics featured throughout this fic are from songs from said album, songs that I feel tie the story together. You obviously do not have to listen to the songs (and I don’t recommend it to anyone who isn’t a fan of metalcore), but the lyrics were really, really inspiring to me, and they helped speak to the fourteen year old girl I once was who was obsessed with vampires. As always, this is dedicated to Tara. 
> 
> I took a lot of liberties with the story-telling, but this is the longest piece of fiction I've written to date, so I'm super proud of it, and I just hope you like it.

When he finishes cleaning the floor, Raleigh sits back on his haunches to survey his work. His back is sore and aching from the way he’d been hunched over, and his knees feel numb from being on them for so long. The lighting in the kitchen is dim, but his work seems to have paid off – he doesn’t see any more red _anywhere_ on the linoleum. It looks like he’s gotten all of the blood.

He swipes an arm across his forehead and stands, grabbing the trash bag he’d slung over the back of one of the chairs before he’d gotten started. Peeling the rubber gloves off, he shoves them in first, and then all of the towels and paper towels he’d used up. He takes the bowl of bleach solution he’d been using to the sink to wash it out, and then he scrubs his hands all the way up to his elbows, despite having been wearing the gloves.

The clock chimes, breaking the silence. It’s midnight.

And suddenly, the vampire at the table laughs.

Raleigh turns off the water, his arms red and burning, and he spins to face Chuck Hansen. “What?”

“It’s my birthday.”

Raleigh blinks, pausing to do the math. Had they really been there that long? His internal clock had gone to hell since Chuck had come to him a couple of weeks prior, since his nights had become his day, and his days had become his night. It didn’t help any that summer weather in Alaska was nothing like the hot humidity of China, which he’d grown somewhat fond of in the time that he’d been there.

These past few days, he’d felt like he was losing his mind trying to keep it all straight. And having to clean up after Chuck’s messes was just the cherry on top, an added bonus to Raleigh’s mounting lunacy.

“Oh…” is all that he can say.

“Would have been twenty-two,” Chuck murmurs. He isn’t laughing anymore, but there’s still a humorless smirk on his face, and his eyes are distant like he’s lost in thought.

If only because he doesn’t know what else to say, Raleigh starts, “Happy –” but Chuck cuts off.

“Don’t feel right celebrating it, now does it?” There’s a little blood on his face, but Raleigh doesn’t point it out. “Implies I’m still alive. Reckon we’re better off celebrating the day Striker blew to shit instead.”

“We don’t know….” Raleigh trails off. Wants to say, _We don’t know if you’re_ not _still alive, we don’t know_ what _you are_. Because they don’t – because it’s all just been a bunch of trial and error since Chuck had appeared outside his front door. But having fangs and a never-ending need for blood doesn’t exactly leave much room for more interpretation.

“Yeah, well. What we do know is that my heart ain’t beating anymore and my skin’s colder than it’ll ever get in this God awful place,” Chuck snorts, and Raleigh bristles a little. They’re currently staying on the outskirts of Fairbanks, a little north of town in a secluded cabin that Raleigh had somehow been able to procure, and he thinks it’s a pretty damn good location for someone like him. Chuck finally looks at Raleigh and bites out, “Seems pretty obvious to me.”

Raleigh has to fight to quell the urge to argue, and he nods.

Chuck stares at him. He looks like he’s waiting for something, and then he seems annoyed when he doesn’t get it. He stands so quickly that Raleigh almost flinches – he’s not at all used to the way Chuck moves now, all fluid and graceful, unnatural like something else is controlling his body. Chuck turns to stalk from the kitchen.

“Your shirt,” Raleigh says quickly, and when Chuck turns back to him, eyebrows furrowing, Raleigh nods at the trash bag. “Your pants can be saved but we need to get rid of your shirt.”

Chuck looks down, like he’s already forgotten what’s happened, like he’s forgotten the red that’s stained all down the front of his shirt, making him look like an extra in a horror movie. His expression goes blank again, and he wordlessly rips the shirt over his head and shoves it into the trash bag. Not sparing Raleigh another look, he storms from the room.

Raleigh doesn’t move. He stays where he is, holding his breath, and he waits until he can hear the bathroom door upstairs close. Then he sighs, his shoulders slumping, and he grabs the counter for support. The bleach is overpowering to his nose, but even so, it doesn’t cover up the lingering scent of blood. He moves to tie off the trash bag, but his knees buckle and his body gives out on him, and he falls into the chair Chuck had been sitting in. He scrubs a hand down his face and gazes at the floor, giving it another critical scan to make sure he’d gotten it all.

But every time he blinks, he can still see it…. The red splashed against the pale yellow squares. The body of that camper and the way her limbs had been bent at awkward angles.

And before he knows it, he starts to laugh. Because Chuck Hansen is a _vampire_. And fuck, that’s rich. Undead, creature of the night, bloodsucker – you name it, that’s Chuck. It’s hilarious, really. And even funnier is that Raleigh insists on sticking around, that he apparently has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. It’s a hoot.

In the time it takes to take a breath, the laughing turns to crying. He hunches over, puts his head between his knees, and he curls an arm against his stomach, which is tight and knotted. It’s somewhat of a delayed reaction, he realizes, something that his body’s been waiting to do for weeks, something he’s refused to let happen until now. He knows that if Chuck is bothering to listen, he can hear Raleigh reaching his breaking point, but he can’t stop himself.

This is the second time he’s had to clean up after Chuck. And a sick feeling in his gut tells him it won’t be the last.

 

*

 

Chuck doesn’t know where it originated from that vampires don’t have reflections.

All he knows is that whoever came up with the idea was a right prick. Because he’s staring at himself in the dingy full length mirror in the bathroom behind the door, and it’s not something he’s ever going to get used to seeing. He’s pale – too pale, too _translucent_ – and there’s a sort of darkness around his eyes, not like dark circles, more like… stage make-up. No, that’s not right either. He doesn’t know.

He just looks flat and dull, washed out. Even his hair looks colorless.

_Lifeless_.

The blood on his chin and cheek, staining his neck, is a stark contrast against his skin. It looks fake.

He glances down at his hands which are surprisingly clean, and he vaguely remembers having washed them after… after he’d gotten back from hiding the body. He flexes his fingers, watches the tendons jump under his skin. They’d jumped the same way when he’d been tightening his hands around the camper’s neck to keep her quiet. Her pulse had drummed beneath his touch, frantic and desperate, and her hands – small compared to his own – had clawed at his wrists, her skin so warm against his.

His gums tingle. He hears the beating heart downstairs, smells sweat clinging to skin. Senses Raleigh’s warm body. His fangs extend. A curse leaves him and he shakes himself out of it, squeezing his eyes shut and snapping his hands into tight fists. But he can’t control it. It’s too hard. Too much.

She’d gotten lost, had come across the cabin by chance, she’d said. She’d asked if they had a working phone and if she could use it – had joked that she was there, so “might as well!” with the prettiest smile Chuck had ever seen. Raleigh hadn’t been home and he’d been _so_ hungry.

He sits down on the side of the bathtub, buries his face in his hands, and damn it all, he starts to cry.

He hadn’t meant to kill her. But his fangs had come out on their own like the usually did, and when she’d seen them, she’d started to scream. He hadn’t meant to even bite her – he’d grabbed her by the throat to try and keep her quiet, to try and get her to listen to him. But his gums had been aching, and she was so warm, and he’d just needed a little. Just a few drops to get the pain to go away, yeah? And hey, she’d been there, so might as well!

He starts to laugh. Because he shouldn’t even exist, this can’t be happening.

There are two short knocks on the door and his head jerks up, his half-sob, half-laugh cutting off in his throat. He’s not completely in control of his senses yet, but Raleigh still shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him like that. Had he heard anything?

“What?” he snaps.

“Where did you…?” comes Raleigh’s voice.

“I’m not telling you. She’s gone. No one will find her,” Chuck says shortly, forces the words out through his teeth.

Raleigh doesn’t respond right away, and when he does, his tone is too casual, too phony. “I’m going out again. Going to meet up with that guy from Fairbanks Memorial.” He hesitates again, and then adds slowly, “You have to make it last this time, Chuck.”

“That’s real easy for you to say. Just get more,” Chuck says, standing and moving towards the door. He wants to get in Raleigh’s face about it, but he doesn’t want Raleigh seeing him like this.

“I can’t.”

“Or you won’t?” Chuck asks sarcastically.

He hears the deep, steadying breath that Raleigh takes, and for some reason, it just makes Chuck more mad, though he doesn’t know why. He’s always let his anger get the better of him, but it’s different now – it’s even harder to reign in his emotions. Which is kind of funny in its own way, because you’d think that being dead would make it easier, would give you more indifference.

“Other people need it too,” Raleigh says. “Actual patients at the hospital and –”

“ _I need it_ ,” Chuck growls, and without meaning to, he slams a hand down on the edge of the sink.

There’s complete silence on the other side of the door for a long, long moment. If he hadn’t been able to hear Raleigh’s heartbeat, he’d have thought that Raleigh had already left.

“I’ll try to be back before sunrise,” Raleigh says, and his tone is softer. There’s a whisper-like sound – Raleigh’s hand sliding away from where it’d been resting against the door, most likely – and then Chuck listens to his footsteps as he crosses the hall and makes his way back downstairs.

Chuck stands there for some time, hears the front door open and close, and then he turns to look back at the mirror. There’s fresh red on his face now, streaked down his cheeks with more yet welling at the corners of his eyes. He clenches his fists again.

Raleigh never asks him about the smashed up mirror.

 

*

_I feel it welling up inside, and Robert Smith lied – boys do cry._

_And with blood tears in my eyes, I’m an Anne Rice novel come to life._

_– “The Crimson,” Atreyu_

*

 

It’s a week or so later, as the temperature’s starting to drop, when Raleigh sees the flier. Hanging up behind the counter at one of the smaller general stores in town, _MISSING_ , it reads in all caps, with a picture of the camper that Chuck had killed. Even if the only time Raleigh had seen her was with a gash in her throat so wide her head had nearly been taken off, he has no trouble recognizing her.

He’s standing at the register, hand outstretched to take his bag of groceries, when his gaze lands on the homemade poster. He hesitates, his stomach dropping in guilt, and this is the quickest he’s ever felt so ill in his life. The cashier – an elderly woman with a too big jacket and Coke bottle glasses – turns and throws a quick glance up at it.

“Shame, isn’t it?” she asks as she turns back around.

His answer is short. “Yeah.”

“Seems kinda funny – war’s finally over, but there’s always something new to mourn,” she says. “They never seem to find the ones that go missing around here, do they?”

“No.”

When he leaves, he gets looks – mostly curious – from some of the locals, and he does his best to ignore them. He knows how people see him; the mysterious guy who lives alone in a somewhat ramshackle cabin and only ventures into town once a week. Even the ones that recognize him as a war ‘hero’ look at him with the same semblance of curious suspicion, wariness. He’s sure they’re probably wondering why he isn’t out in California or something, soaking up fame and fortune.

It’s times like this when he misses Mako.

They’d been living together in Kowloon Bay when Chuck had made his grand reappearance, in a small apartment near the water. After the Breach had been closed, the both of them had sort of just stayed in China, neither having any real motivation to leave – they were all each other had left in the world, and since they were already together, what was the point? Mako had been in Japan then, however, in Nara – Raleigh had wanted to go with her, only she’d said that she wanted to be alone. Which he’d known was code for her wanting to grieve over Pentecost on her own terms, which he more than understood after Yancy.

When Chuck turned up, Raleigh had moved them out of town almost instantly, wanting to get him out of sight as quickly as possible. It made him feel like a coward, running away before she returned, with only a hastily written letter left for her to come back to – he hadn’t mentioned Chuck, of course, had only said that he needed to sort some things out, that he too needed some time alone. It’s all he could have done, right? Especially after what’d happened with Chuck that first night, there was no way he could have kept him at the apartment until she came home from Japan. If only he didn’t feel so empty without her. If only he didn’t feel so empty.

There’s still quite a few hours of sun left – it won’t start setting at a normal time until September or October – so the house is completely still and quiet when he gets back. It doesn’t take him long to put away his few groceries, he only has to shop for one person, of course, and afterwards, he makes his way into the small square of a living room. He sheds his light jacket, tosses it onto the coach, and then he lets himself fall onto it, throwing an arm over his eyes and sighing heavily.

The cabin doesn’t have a basement, only a crawl space just big enough for the heating unit and whatnot, so Chuck sleeps – if you can call it that – in the attic. It’s not completely insulated and would be way too cold for Raleigh, but it _is_ light-proof – absolutely no sun gets through. Raleigh’s only seen the effects of sunlight on Chuck’s skin once, but it’s not something he’d care to repeat. Chuck had avoided the sun since he’d first come to Raleigh, but when they’d arrived in Fairbanks, he’d wanted to see what it did, so he’d thrown open the curtains Raleigh had hung. He hadn’t caught fire or anything dramatic like that, but he had slowly started to bake. His skin reddened, steamed, started to warp as it heated up, and that had been when Raleigh had shut the curtains. The smell had remained the rest of the day.

It’s how they have to figure these things out – like Chuck’s some sort of science project that needs to be tested over and over again. Just the night before the incident with the camper, Chuck had used a knife to slice open one of his palms right in front of Raleigh to see what would happen. He hadn’t bled at all, and it’d healed, like most movies and books claimed vampires did.

But for everything that’s regarded as a vampire truth in fiction, there’s things that don’t really add up, things that make it all the more confusing.

Raleigh knows about as much about vampires as the next guy, and he knows that in fiction, you have to be bitten to be turned into one. Only, Chuck doesn’t remember if that actually ever happened – he even swears that it didn’t. He always says he doesn’t remember much aside from showing up outside Raleigh’s apartment, but sometimes he says really baffling stuff. Stuff that seems to imply that he’d simply woken up like this and had walked right out of the ocean itself, seeking Raleigh out by scent alone because it was the only thing familiar to him.

But that doesn’t seem possible.

Then again, all the shit Raleigh’d seen in his life? Monster aliens, another dimension? What else could possibly exist that people didn’t know about?

He figures it’s something that triggered itself at Chuck’s death. Like… a pathogen. Something in his physiology that had reanimated him like this. He’d died that day with Pentecost, plain and simple; _nobody_ could have survived Striker Eureka blowing up. And a good five and a half months had passed between the closing of the Breach and Chuck’s arrival, but…. Well, Chuck doesn’t need to breathe, he wouldn’t have had to worry about drowning, so maybe all that time had been spent at the bottom of the ocean. And maybe his body had been mending itself back together while he was there, sewing itself together the way his skin had after he’d cut into it with the knife. Maybe, after he was healed up, he _had_ just walked right out of the sea.

Thinking about it makes Raleigh’s head hurt. And he figures it doesn’t do much good anyway – he has to take care of a newborn vampire with barely controllable urges, he doesn’t have time to think on the science of it all.

He drifts in and out, has strange dreams. He sees Yancy and Mako at the cabin with him, his parents and Jazmine. He dreams he’s chasing ghosts – he follows Yancy down the hall, watches him turn into a room and disappear completely. Dreams he’s standing in the kitchen and sees Mako out of the corner of his eye before she disappears.

And then he sees sharp fangs snapping at him, a set of eyes gleaming in the darkness.

He comes to with a jolt, nearly falling off the couch.

The house is dark and he can hear movement across the hall – Chuck’s awake. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and climbs to his feet, and when he enters the kitchen, flipping on the light, it’s in time to find Chuck pulling a blood bag from the microwave – Raleigh’s never needed to ask why he prefers it heated. If there’s any conversation he wants to avoid, it’s the ones based on Chuck’s feeding habits.

“Hey,” Raleigh says.

Chuck sweeps his gaze over Raleigh almost contemplatively, murmurs a noncommittal response.

“There’s posters in town… for that girl….” Raleigh doesn’t really know where he’s going with that so he lets his words trail off.

Chuck’s eyes darken and he looks down at the blood bag in his hand. After a moment of consideration, Chuck lifts the bag up like he’s brandishing a weapon and says, “You mind, asshole? You know I hate it when you watch me.”

Raleigh rolls his eyes – sometimes he just can’t help himself – and with a little sigh, he turns and goes back out into the hallway. He leans against the wall just outside the room, folding his arms over his chest, and he shrugs, even though Chuck can’t see him. “I just want to make sure she won’t be found.”

“I told you already. She won’t,” Chuck says, voice different in a way that means his fangs are out. There’s a wet puncturing sound that turns Raleigh’s stomach.

As he waits for Chuck to finish, he has to make an effort not to think about the girl – he doesn’t need to think about the family she must have, or whether or not she’d left behind people that depended on her. She was no one, he tells himself. A piece of meat. A bag of bones and blood. Nothing.

But he can’t. And the attempt doesn’t make him feel any better.

Chuck appears in the archway of the kitchen when he’s done. His skin looks just as dead as it had before – even after he feeds, it never gets any of its color back – and his lips are slightly tinged with red. Like when you drink fruit juice. “She’s gone,” he insists shortly.

“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Raleigh says.

Chuck stares at him, but then his eyes seem to lose some of their stoniness, and he drops his gaze. “I know.”

“It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“I know that too,” Chuck says sarcastically. But he meets Raleigh’s gaze again, and for once, he looks like he’s actually trying to be civil. “I promise you, mate – no one’s finding her.”

It isn’t as comforting as Raleigh’d hoped it would be. But he nods anyway.

 

*

_And I swear to you, on everything I am,_

_And I dedicate to you all that I have._

_– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu_

*

 

Whether it’s because Chuck is so new at this, or because he’s a glutton, or because it’s just how the whole vampire thing works, the blood bags go too fast.

And when Chuck runs out one early September night, Raleigh and he get into an argument. Raleigh normally tries not to get angry with him, mostly because he knows that Chuck can’t help himself, can’t help what he’s become. But also because Raleigh has a stupid sense of pride in him and he doesn’t want Chuck getting smug over it, doesn’t want Chuck to feel like he’s won because Raleigh got mad. But even Raleigh can only tolerate so much – and Chuck knows all the right buttons to push, he always did, even when he was alive.

“ _What_ do you want me to do?” Raleigh demands.

“You said you’d take care of me,” Chuck says, sounding like the child he never got to be.

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“Well your best isn’t bloody good enough!” Chuck’s fangs extend like he doesn’t even have to think about it, like it’s a natural instinct. His eyes are sparking in his anger, and a deep part of Raleigh knows that he should be afraid of him – has always known he should be afraid.

But naiveté or stupid bravado keeps Raleigh undaunted. “You’re not making it any easier on me. You were supposed to make it last.”

“I _did_. How long d’you reckon it should have lasted me, eh? It ain’t like you got me an infinite amount of it,” Chuck says.

“I got you enough,” Raleigh says. He turns away, running a hand through his hair – he’s cut it close to his head, much closer than he likes, because he’d taken to pulling it out when things got to be too much for him with Chuck. “ _Christ_. The guy I get it from? He’s starting to ask more questions. He’s starting to pry.”

“So get a new guy.”

And the sheer audacity of such a response has Raleigh spinning back to Chuck, his nostrils flaring and his eyebrows shooting up. “Do you have _any_ idea how hard this is for me? The shit I have to do?”

“Not exactly a walk in the park for me either –”

“No, _you_ have the easy job. _You_ get to sit back and wait for me to bring you blood, and if I don’t deliver it fast enough, _you_ get to bitch and moan about what a piss-poor job I’m doing.” Chuck opens his mouth in a snarl to respond, but Raleigh doesn’t want to hear it. “I dropped _everything_ for you. I left Mako. I came all the way out here and turned into this – this reclusive freak who lives in a cabin in the woods. I know every trick in the book to cleaning up blood, and I’m bribing a guy at the hospital to give me the shit they use for transfusions – shit innocent patients need. And I’m doing all of this _for you_.” He shakes his head and throws his arms out at his sides. “And what am I getting out of this? The blame. It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”

Chuck glowers at him, and though his mouth is slightly open, his fangs still visible, he doesn’t say anything. He sort of just stares at Raleigh like he’s never seen him before, and Raleigh stares back. Straightening his shirt, Raleigh puffs his chest out a little and turns to leave the room. He strides towards the doorway as casually as he can because he’s already starting to feel guilty – he’d thought it’d feel good to get that all out, but it just makes him feel worse.

“What am I supposed to –?” Chuck starts to indignantly ask.

“ _Starve_.” Raleigh regrets the word the minute it leaves his mouth, but he doesn’t look back as he leaves the kitchen.

 

*

 

Chuck doesn’t blame Raleigh for what he said.

He may have always been a hothead whose mouth got him into trouble more times than he could count, but he was never too irrational – he’d always been at least a little level-headed, despite what most people thought. And he’d never been an idiot. Too stubborn for his own good, maybe, but not stupid. He knows he deserved everything Raleigh had thrown at him – even the chair.

Okay, especially the chair.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Which, of course, just makes Chuck feel worse about it all, the fact that he’s actually wounded by that one simple word Raleigh had hissed at him before disappearing upstairs. Deep down, he knows that Raleigh hadn’t meant it. But it sort of hits a little too close, digs itself just a little too deep under his skin. Because Chuck knows that without Raleigh, he probably wouldn’t still be around. He has to depend entirely on Raleigh and that makes him feel… guilty, he reckons. Considering the shit Raleigh’s had to do for him, like the camper back in August, or the man in China that first night. Both of which Chuck knows gave Raleigh nightmares, though Raleigh would never admit it.

But Chuck…. Well, he’s scared. And it’s easier to take it out on Raleigh in the form of anger than it is to confront the feeling.

He hadn’t really meant to make Raleigh as mad as he got, though. He knows this is hard on him, can actually see the toll it’s taking on him – Raleigh looks like he’s aged at least eight years in the past two months alone, and his face is harder and more closed off. He looks even worse than he had when he’d first come to the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and Chuck had thought he’d looked bloody awful then. He’s quiet and withdrawn, and sometimes days pass without him saying a single word.

And it’s Chuck’s fault. The knowledge of that just makes him feel shittier than he already does all the time – he’s pissed at himself for bringing this on Raleigh, for burying him under such stress and hardship, but he doesn’t know how to express it, so he just takes it out on Raleigh instead.

_Fuck_. It’s all bullshit.

After Raleigh had left the kitchen, Chuck had remained. He’s embarrassed and ashamed of himself, though he’d vehemently deny it if anyone ever asked. It’s just that Raleigh’s always been so patient with him – he almost doesn’t know how to react to the other man’s anger. So while he listens to Raleigh move around upstairs in his room, Chuck just hangs out in the kitchen for an hour or so. He picks up the chair Raleigh had thrown, and he alternates between sitting in it and pacing back and forth.

He finds himself stopping to stand at the back door, staring out at the trees through the small window and contemplating whether or not he should go out and try to find some animal to feed from. He’s pretty sure bears and moose can sometimes be nocturnal, and aren’t they local to these parts? He’s had animal blood before, but it tastes even worse than the shit Raleigh gets from the hospital – it tastes dirty. He’d rather go without, thinks maybe he can last another day or two.

Who knows what he’ll do after that, though?

When he hears Raleigh come down the stairs and stop outside the kitchen, Chuck pretends not to have noticed. He almost wishes he’d retreated to the attic instead, because Raleigh hates going up there – too small, he says, too cold – and Chuck’s still a little embarrassed. He can sense it as Raleigh enters the room, moving slowly towards him, and Chuck frowns, wanting desperately to say something, but apologizing has never been his thing. He just doesn’t know how to.

It’s Raleigh who speaks first, finally.

“What I said…. I didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah. I know,” Chuck says shortly. Then, he purposely tries to soften his tone – which is a lot harder than it should be, and it comes out sounding wrong anyway. “Neither did I.”

They’re quiet again. When Chuck makes himself turn away from the door, he finds Raleigh watching him, his eyes dark and intense, expression hard with deliberation. When he’d been alive, Chuck might have flushed and wilted a little under such scrutiny, but instead, he just stares back.

Raleigh’s mouth twitches a little, like he’s biting back the words he wants to say, and when he does speak again, it’s on a sigh. “I’m gonna try and find some new contacts at the hospital. Until I can, I’ll meet with my guy tomorrow and see if a little more money will get him to stop asking questions.”

Chuck nods. Reckons the wait won’t kill him. There’s a very dull ache in his teeth, but nowhere near as severe as it usually is when he’s hungry, at least.

But all of a sudden, Raleigh’s shrugging out of his sweater, and tossing it onto the table carelessly. He straightens the white singlet he’d been wearing under it, and gives Chuck a look that can only be called pointed and expectant, and Chuck’s more confused than he’s proud of.

“What?” he asks stupidly.

“You can have some of mine for now.”

Chuck gives a quick shake of his head. “Don’t need it. I can wait.”

“I’m not gonna beg you if that’s what you’re waiting for,” Raleigh says, a little gruffly like he’s irritated by Chuck’s response.

Chuck hesitates and looks back at Raleigh again. He’s only fed from him once before, back on that first night in China, a night that is, truthfully, somewhat of a blur to Chuck. He doesn’t remember much, apart from stumbling into the complex and finding Raleigh’s apartment through scent. His hunger had been _unbearable_ , agonizing, even, and Raleigh had smelled like sunshine and rain and sweat all rolled into one. He’d smelled like life itself.

But he does distinctly remember Raleigh having to use force to get Chuck to stop feeding. They hadn’t talked about it since.

“You’re sure about this,” he asks, and maybe he sneers a little, because it’s just easier to treat Raleigh like this. “Look, I already know you didn’t mean what you said – you don’t have to make it up to me or anything.”

“I can’t promise I’m gonna be able to get you any blood tomorrow. This is just something to hold you over until I do,” Raleigh says firmly.

He moves closer and Chuck can’t deny that the heat radiating off of him wakes something up in him, a faint pull stirring in his gut. On the surface, Raleigh smells like clean linen and coffee beans, but beneath that is something more natural, something natural and heady, and Chuck unconsciously runs his tongue over his teeth.

“Take it from my neck this time.”

Chuck drops his gaze to Raleigh’s right hand, his brow furrowing just a little. The first time, he’d bitten Raleigh’s wrist. “Why not –?”

“I want both my hands free,” Raleigh says after a beat. Doesn’t need to add ‘ _Just in case_ ;’ it hangs in the air obviously. But when he sees that Chuck is still a little unsure, he says, “I’m only doing this because I know your – your hunger isn’t that bad yet. I’m not worried.”

“Are you really that much of an idiot?” Chuck asks. “Having your hands free won’t do a damn bit of good.”

“I trust you…. Mostly,” Raleigh says. “Maybe I’m curious what it feels like. Maybe it hurt too damn much when you took it from my wrist and I just want to see if there’s an easier way.”

Chuck frowns. He doesn’t need to be reminded that he’s the source of so much difficulty and pain. His gaze drops to Raleigh’s hand again, but Raleigh turns his arm inward like he’s trying to hide the scar. Then he’s cocking his head to the side, his neck and jaw flexing with the motion, and Chuck feels a sharp, instinctive pang in his gums, his teeth starting to feel sore almost instantly. And when Raleigh raises his eyebrows in impatience, Chuck really can’t find it in him to keep saying no. _Weak_ , one half of his brain thinks. _Eat_ , the other half drowns it out.

He closes the gap between them, and to Raleigh’s credit, he doesn’t flinch or back away – even as Chuck’s fangs smoothly extend, something Chuck still isn’t entirely in control of. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash. He’s never once shown any fear when it came to Chuck, and while that might have been something that would have pissed off the human Chuck, vampire Chuck thinks it’s… kind of nice.

As Chuck lifts a hand, taking Raleigh’s jaw in it, Raleigh tenses in anticipation, though it’s almost imperceptible, and Chuck tilts the blond’s head just enough to expose his neck more. His eyes zero in on Raleigh’s pulse point, can see it jump beneath the smooth skin, and again, Chuck brushes his tongue against his teeth to try and soothe the ache. His throat’s gone dry and there’s a blurred red filling the corners of his vision.

He pauses like he’s waiting for Raleigh to change his mind, and then he leans in and without warning, sinks his fangs into Raleigh’s taut flesh. They slide in like hot knives through butter, and Raleigh makes a surprised little gasping sound that speaks to a deep, dark part of Chuck that he’d rather not acknowledge – the predator in him.

And then Raleigh’s blood – hotter and so much sweeter than the stuff from the hospital – hits Chuck’s tongue and lights him up, sending a jolt of electricity through his dead bones. There’s something so entirely different when it comes to drinking blood from plastic bags and fresh, live blood like this. The blurred red spreads into a haze that covers the entirety of his vision now and Chuck attaches his lips to Raleigh’s throat, shaping the punctures so as not to spill and let any go to waste. He takes a long pull, unable to stop himself from making a rumbling sort of noise of appreciation in his chest as he swallows the honey-thick liquid.

 

*

 

When Chuck’s fangs first pierced his skin, Raleigh couldn’t help the gasp that left him, because it hurt, of course, but not in the way he’d expected. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt before – and that’s saying a lot, considering some of the injuries he’d sustained during the war. It feels invasive. Wrong. Raleigh instinctively wants to pull away, and he knows that he could because Chuck’s grasp isn’t that tight on him, and hey, that’s what Raleigh had wanted his hands free for anyway. But he doesn’t.  

He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Chuck that he wanted him to bite his neck this time because of how badly it’d hurt his wrist. The night Chuck had bitten him, he’d been nearly feral and wild, and the scar he’d left on Raleigh’s wrist wasn’t pretty. And when it’d been happening, Raleigh hadn’t liked the feeling of having only one hand free – it had made him feel like he had no control at all.

And even as Chuck holds him, one hand still on his jaw, the other coming up to curl around Raleigh’s shoulder, Raleigh feels like this is better. He twists the fingers of both hands into the material of Chuck’s T-shirt at the collar, ready to fight back if need be – and even with the pain, he feels good, he feels up to the mark. Chuck’s lips are cold against his skin, wet with blood – _mine_ , Raleigh thinks almost incredulously – and it’s a surreal sensation.

And as Chuck makes that low appreciative noise, something completely _bizarre_ happens. A thrill slides down Raleigh’s spine, curling around the base, and his hands unintentionally tighten in Chuck’s shirt. A noise threatens to leave him, so he bites down on his bottom lip hard to stifle it. And as Chuck takes a second pull on his blood, Raleigh feels it throughout his entire body. It hurts – almost feels like something inside of him is being torn out by the roots against its will – but at the same time, it feels maybe a little… good.

Maybe _really_ good.

It hadn’t felt like this that first time. That had burned and made his entire arm feel like it was literally getting ripped out of its socket, and it was a pain that he’d felt for many days after. A pain he swore he could sometimes still feel. But this is so different. It’s a feeling that goes to his head like liquor, makes him feel airy and high. He gets a little lightheaded, but that feels good too – like when you’re a kid and you close your eyes and just spin around in circles for fun.

But he isn’t dumb.

“Enough,” he says. His voice is thick and husky, and even with Chuck’s heightened senses, he’s worried Chuck can’t hear him. So he clears his throat and says a little more firmly, “That’s enough, Chuck.”

For a split second, it doesn’t seem like Chuck’s going to stop, and a very brief panic wells up in Raleigh before he runs through a hundred different scenarios in his head. He’d had to fight Chuck off of him the first time, and though he doesn’t want to hurt him, he can do it again if he has to, make no mistake about it. He braces himself, gets ready for it, even.

But then Chuck lets him go.

Breathless, Raleigh takes a step back, almost swaying on his feet, and he claps a hand over his neck to apply pressure – the punctures are small, not at all like what happened with his wrist. A lot of vampires in books and whatnot have some sort of healing power they can share with their victims, so that their bites won’t leave marks, but that’s not the case with whatever Chuck is. But scars are nothing new to Raleigh.

Chuck’s eyes are closed like he’s still savoring the taste, and he wipes at his mouth with the back of a hand, which does nothing but smear a line of blood over his cheek. Raleigh has to look away, which is almost funny – he’s totally okay with letting Chuck drink his blood, but seeing him like this is apparently too much. So he turns away, pressing at his neck and still feeling a little dizzy, and right about now he realizes that something isn’t quite right.

He glances down and an immediate wave of shame sends heat racing up his neck and into his cheeks.

“I need to get something on this,” he says curtly, hurrying to the doorway. He doesn’t know if Chuck even hears him – he looks like he’s experiencing some kind of high from Raleigh’s blood, like he’s somewhere else entirely – and a part of Raleigh’s actually glad he’s in such a mood. At least he hasn’t seemed to notice.

In the bathroom, he goes through the motions of cleaning and bandaging his neck, and then he sits down on the toilet with the lid closed, and he tries to take a few steadying breaths. But then he looks into the mirror behind the door – smashed and cracked from Chuck, an incident he’d never asked about – and he cringes. It’s bad enough that he can _feel_ it, but seeing it just makes it worse.

He’s practically hard as a rock, straining against and tenting his loose-fitting pants. He covers his face with a hand so he doesn’t have to see it anymore, and he stays in the bathroom for a little while, talking himself down until his erection’s gone.

But later on, when he’s lying in bed with sunlight creeping in through the curtains, and when the house is still and quiet because Chuck’s retreated to the attic, Raleigh can’t sleep. There’s an echo of pain in his neck and a ghost of the pleasure he’d felt when Chuck had been drinking his blood – he tries not to think about it, but it’d been intense, and his mind can’t help but to linger. He lets his fingers brush over the bandage at his throat absentmindedly, and he thinks about Chuck’s cool lips against his skin, his firm hands holding Raleigh in place. More importantly, he thinks about the noise Chuck had made, that low rumbling in his chest.

And before he knows it, Raleigh’s hard again.

He rolls onto his stomach like he can crush his erection out of existence, but he winds up just starting to grind his hips down to get more friction. And if he ends up thrusting against the mattress until he comes in his boxers, his eyes squeezed closed and his mind recalling Chuck’s mouth at his neck, he blames it on the fact that he hasn’t had sex for a long, long while.

And he tells himself that it’s just because his body still doesn’t know how to react to being bitten like that. He’s not _attracted_ to Chuck. He’s not attracted to a monster.

 

*

_I’m losing control, and it’s all that I can do_

_Not to black out, and fall into lust with you._

_– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu_

*

 

A few weeks later, a detective from Anchorage comes by the cabin.

When Raleigh wakes up to heavy knocking at the front door, he’s immediately cautious. They never get visitors – and why should they? Raleigh doesn’t know anybody in town – and it’s the middle of the day, judging by the sunlight streaming in through his window. He hurriedly slips into some jeans and a sweater from the floor, and on his way down the stairs, he makes sure the cluster of bite marks on his neck are covered up.

So he’d let Chuck feed from him a few more times, what of it? It hasn’t been easy getting in touch with new contacts at Fairbanks Memorial, and he’s only doing it to take care of Chuck – if he doesn’t, Chuck will starve. It’s not because of the sick sexual pleasure he gets out of it – not at all. He _isn’t_ attracted to Chuck Hansen, and this is just him being a good person, and that’s final. Period. End of story.

The detective is young – maybe even younger than Raleigh – and he shuffles a little when Raleigh opens the door, looking strangely excited. Raleigh figures it must be his first outing alone or something, must be eager to prove himself, and he’s too lost in thought to catch the man’s name when he flashes his badge, which is upside-down, mind you. The detective apologizes for disturbing him, but Raleigh takes all the blame – explains that he keeps odd hours, hints at insomnia.

“Yeah, I suppose it isn’t easy adjusting to normal life after the war,” the man says.

And then it makes sense why he’d seemed so excited – it looks like Raleigh’s got a fan.

He invites the detective in and gets a pot of coffee brewing, and he doesn’t bother telling the man to be quiet or anything, because Chuck sleeps like… well, he sleeps like the dead. His body literally shuts down and he can’t be woken up until he’s good and ready – and Raleigh should know, he’d tried everything he could think of on a few different occasions to get Chuck up.

“So let me tell you why I’m here, Mr. Becket –”

“You can call me Raleigh,” he cuts him off gently. Because he knows the reaction he’s going to get. And sure enough, the detective looks like he’s just been told Santa Claus is real and coming to town early. It’s not that Raleigh enjoys playing people, but if he’s got it, he’s going to use it to his advantage.

After he fixes him a cup of coffee – and after the man says, “Who’d have thought I’d be having coffee with Raleigh Becket?” – Raleigh sits down at the table with him and tries to look as casual and unsuspecting as possible. He knows what this is about. And his stomach is twisted up into a tight knot because of it.

When the detective pulls out a photo, Raleigh doesn’t even need to look at it to know it’s the camper that Chuck had killed. But he pretends to study the picture as the detective tells him about where she was from, how long she’s been missing – about how Raleigh’s cabin is in the general area she liked to hike and camp around. And Raleigh puts on his best sympathetic look – which isn’t that difficult, considering his very real guilt – and says no, he hasn’t ever seen her, that he doesn’t tend to see many people around his parts, actually.

“I imagine most people like to steer clear of this place – it kind of looks like a haunted house,” the detective says with a little smile, his good humor making it seem like he doesn’t at all consider Raleigh a suspect.

“I _am_ known as the weird and reclusive war vet who lives all alone and talks to himself,” Raleigh jokes back lightly.

And that, for some reason, ignites the detective’s excitement about Jaegers and winning the war, and Raleigh – for no reason other than to get in the guy’s good graces – humors him and tells him all about it. He tells him about what it was like piloting, how much he misses it, and he talks about the devastating loss of Stacker Pentecost. And when the detective asks about Mako, Raleigh tells him that they’d both just needed some time apart to recuperate.

And when they’re done, the detective sits back in his chair and just sort of stares at Raleigh with an awed expression on his face. “I just… can’t believe you’re out here all alone. Seems like you deserve a lot more,” he says finally.

Raleigh shrugs and tries to ignore the way his mind flashes to Chuck. Absentmindedly, he rubs at his neck where the bite marks are to make sure his sweater’s hiding them. “Being alone’s not so bad – I got everything I need out here,” he says, almost robotically, like it’s a practiced answer.

When he walks the detective to the door a good few minutes later, the other man almost asks him for an autograph – Raleigh can just feel it coming. But then, as if stepping out onto the porch is his way of stepping back into reality, the detective becomes a professional again.

“I’m really sorry to have woken you up, Mr. Beck – Raleigh.” He heaves a sigh and looks out at the trees surrounding the cabin, shaking his head. “So many people go missing around here, I find myself at dead ends more often than not.”

“I hope you find her,” Raleigh says.

And somehow, he manages to shut and lock the door before he breaks down.

He all but collapses in on himself and makes it to the stairs, where he sits and hunches over, trying to keep his breathing under control. He feels like he’s going to be sick, and he knows it’s the remorse and shame of it all – not just the lying about not having seen the woman, but that he’d expressed the false hope that she be found, because god knows, he hopes no one ever, _ever_ finds her. And that is severely _fucked up_.

After he collects himself, he paces and wanders the house, too wired to go back to sleep. In the end, he finds himself pulling the attic ladder down and climbing up to join Chuck. Besides being cooler than the rest of the house, the attic is pitch black, so he has to use his hands to feel around as he clambers in. He finds Chuck – accidentally digs his knee into Chuck’s thigh, but Chuck is still and lifeless, and doesn’t at all react – and he stretches out beside him in the darkness.

He realizes he’s seeking comfort from a vampire – one who couldn’t even stand him in life – and he can’t help but laugh aloud at the irony of it all. Chuck’s relying on him for survival and care, and he’s relying on Chuck for ‘human’ contact and companionship. It’s messed up. It’s all messed up.

It’s easy to tell when Chuck wakes up – it’s like a button is pressed and he comes to life, his body giving a very slight twitch almost like he’s taking a breath. Chuck hesitates, and after a long moment, he curses.

“Don’t bloody do that, Raleigh,” he grumps.

And yeah, maybe it’s not the smartest idea to sneak up on a sleeping vampire.

“Sorry,” Raleigh says. Means it.

“What are you doing up here? You hate it.”

Raleigh nods, because he _does_ hate the attic. It’s barely big enough to be considered a room at all, and the lack of insulation makes it extremely uncomfortable. “A detective came by earlier…. To ask about that girl,” he says slowly. He knows he doesn’t have to clarify. As cool as Chuck likes to act, he knows that the guilt’s been eating away at him too. “She was from Anchorage, he said. Liked camping up here.”

“What’d you tell him?” Chuck asks.

“That a vampire killed her, what do you think?” Raleigh says a little curtly.  He sighs. “Guy was more interested in Gipsy Danger and the war than his job. Made it easier for me to lie to him.”

“Even out here you’re famous,” Chuck scoffs, and though Raleigh can’t see him, he can tell he’s rolling his eyes.

“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Chuck.”

Chuck grumbles something but Raleigh ignores it. They both lie there for a moment and Raleigh tries to think of something else to say – he feels the desperate need to make it seem like he’d come up to the attic for more than just the small comfort that came from telling him about the detective.

But Chuck speaks first. “You gonna make me drink from a bag tonight?”

“You’re starting to take me for granted now,” Raleigh says.

Chuck makes a noise in his throat like he’s trying to argue but doesn’t know how. He eventually settles on, “You taste good.”

“Compliment?”

“I think so.”

Raleigh grins because he can’t help it.

“Don’t let it go to your head, mate.”

“If I give you my blood tonight, it’s bagged tomorrow,” Raleigh says, and Chuck makes a ‘uh huh’ sort of sound. Raleigh feels only a little ashamed of himself for looking forward to it – the healed bites on his neck tingle with his eagerness, and oh how he’s going to hate himself when he’s alone again. “Alright, meet you downst –” he starts to say.

“Why not now?”

“In here?” Raleigh asks.

“I don’t feel like moving just yet, and the sun’s still out – I can feel it,” Chuck says. “Just come here and let me bite you already.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Please.”

Propping himself up, he leans over Chuck. This position is even more awkward than he’d thought it would be, but Chuck doesn’t seem to think so – Raleigh has to remind himself that Chuck would have no reason to find this uncomfortable; his need to feed trumps everything else. And as one of Chuck’s hands finds Raleigh’s jaw, his grasp firm but familiar, almost startling in the way it seems to come out of nowhere, a thrill shoots down Raleigh’s spine.

And he has to admit to himself that yeah, maybe he’s a little attracted to Chuck. A thought that makes him feel kind of nauseated actually.

It’s a mistake, he figures, to let Chuck continue to feed from him. Because it’ll accomplish nothing but to make things even more strange between them. God, how would Chuck react if he knew how much Raleigh enjoys it? If he found out that Raleigh often thought about it when he couldn’t sleep? Chuck uses his other hand to push the collar of Raleigh’s sweater out of the way, and then he leans up and buries his face in Raleigh’s neck. When his cold mouth presses against Raleigh’s skin, Raleigh tenses and his breath catches in anticipation – he suddenly doesn’t care about the awkward position either.

When Chuck’s fangs pierce his skin, Raleigh can’t help the small noise he makes at the initial pain – and the sound of it, of his flesh tearing beneath the razor sharp points, seems excruciatingly loud in his head. With his palms flat on the floor on either side of Chuck, he braces his weight over him and he forces himself to relax, even though his heart is hammering in his chest and his pulse thrums loud in his ears. Is this a physical reaction to the bite? Or is this simply his attraction to Chuck?

The thought almost makes him laugh. He doesn’t even know what to think anymore – Chuck Hansen’s got him all twisted up and turned upside-down. He’s ruined Raleigh’s life.

Like he’s savoring it, Chuck takes a slow pull on Raleigh’s blood, and the sensation ripples down Raleigh’s spine, makes his stomach tighten like when you’re riding a rollercoaster and going down a steep hill. Without thinking, he moves one of his hands to Chuck’s hair, fingers twisting into it, and Chuck’s grasp on him tightens in response. Another deep pull sends a current of electricity straight to Raleigh’s groin, and a choked moan leaves him before he can even think to bite it back. The arm keeping him up wobbles a little, and he lets his eyes fall closed, his head getting light and fuzzy. He can hear Chuck swallowing his blood and he knows he should be grossed out, but _fuck_ , it feels too good. And Chuck makes an approving sound like he’s agreeing with Raleigh’s train of thought; the noise rides through Raleigh, encouraging him. Lost to the moment, like someone else has taken control of him, Raleigh pushes his hips down, grinding his hardening cock against Chuck’s thigh.

It’s something he can bask in forever, the giddiness that comes from having his blood drank. But a guy only has so much blood to give, he knows.

He opens his mouth to tell Chuck that he’s had enough, but Chuck stops on his own. His hold on Raleigh loosens and he pulls back, lapping at Raleigh’s neck a final time before he relaxes against the floor again. Still lightheaded and trying to catch his breath, Raleigh doesn’t move for a long moment, wanting to gather himself. But then he realizes he’s still pressed against Chuck, still hard and getting harder by the second.

Hoping the feeding’s got Chuck’s mind distracted and that he hasn’t noticed the stiffness digging into his thigh, Raleigh starts to move off of him. But Chuck’s hand is on his jaw again, making Raleigh flinch, and instinctively, Raleigh tries to pull away. Chuck holds him there, however, and though Raleigh can’t see him through the darkness, he can feel Chuck’s eyes burning into him as he studies him.

Chuck abruptly shifts and then his lips – cool, wet with Raleigh’s blood – press against Raleigh’s. It’s a soft, almost hesitant kiss, like Chuck’s uncertain of how Raleigh will take it, and though Raleigh wants to feel weirded out by it, he can’t – it sends another thrill right through him. And isn’t this what he wanted the whole time? He shouldn’t like any of this… but he does.

When Chuck pulls back again, his hand stays on Raleigh’s jaw, his thumb moving very subtly back and forth, and his eyes bore into Raleigh. Raleigh stares back at him, wishes the light was on because he wants – no, _needs_ – to see his expression, wants to not only feel the intensity of his gaze, but see it as well. They remain like this, drowning in the heavy silence, and Raleigh feels like he’s dreaming. This is too surreal.

And then, something in him snaps.

Blindly, he finds Chuck’s wrists and jerks Chuck’s arms up over his head, pinning them there. God knows Chuck could break free if he wanted – the whole super strength and all – but Chuck lets it happen, like he’s curious to see what comes next. And what comes next is Raleigh leaning down and covering Chuck’s mouth with his own, kissing him harder. A kiss more direct than the one Chuck had given him. And Chuck responds instantly, his lips parting and mouth slanting against Raleigh’s. Raleigh pushes his tongue into Chuck’s mouth, licks at his teeth, and a jolt goes through him when he feels that Chuck’s fangs are still extended. Flicking his tongue over the sharp points earns a throaty noise from Chuck, like it feels good, and that noise makes Raleigh’s cock nearly throb.

Raleigh can’t explain the desperation that’s come over him. It’s just that he’s been fighting this for the past few weeks, trying to bury all of this shit – the loneliness, the need for real companionship, the guilt and the uselessness – and he can’t hold it back anymore. Even tasting his own blood in Chuck’s mouth doesn’t deter him – it’s bizarre and makes his stomach turn at first, but it’s oddly intoxicating.

He hasn’t asked for much since taking Chuck in, but this is something he wants. Something he needs.

There’s a tickle at his throat, warm and wet, and it hits him that he’s still bleeding. This one simple and tiny realization wakes him from his reverie, and reality comes slamming back into him like a Mack truck. He yanks away from Chuck, panting, and one of his hands snaps up to his neck.

What the hell’s wrong with him? What would Yancy think if he were alive to see this? What would Mako think?

What would Chuck’s father think?

“I gotta put something on this,” he mumbles, and he gracelessly shimmies backwards towards the attic ladder. He drops down onto the landing, leaves the ladder where it is, and he dashes into the bathroom like he’s worried Chuck will follow. He even locks the door, though he’s not sure if it’s his way of protecting himself, or protecting Chuck.

Funny. He’s the human – he should be the voice of reason in all of this, he should be the one who has no problem controlling himself.

He pulls his sweater off, dropping it to the floor as he goes into the medicine cabinet for bandages and antiseptic. _Idiot_ , he thinks harshly. And then he hisses the word aloud, scolding himself. When he shuts the cabinet and catches sight of himself in the mirror, he winces.

There’s blood smeared on his lips and chin. He lowers his gaze to his neck, the slowly bleeding puncture marks smack dab in the middle of the others that are all mostly healed.

And mixed with the shame of it all, Raleigh hates that tiny thrill he feels at the sight.

 

*

_For the first time, I’m losing control._

_And I like it._

_– “My Sanity on the Funeral Pyre,” Atreyu_

*

 

Chuck definitely wants to blame Raleigh for this one.

About a week passes and Raleigh avoids him like he’s got the plague or something, and Chuck’s back to drinking strictly from blood bags. When night rolls around and Chuck wakes up, Raleigh keeps to his room. And Chuck’s got far too much pride to knock on his door and beg for attention, even if that’s what he really, _really_ wants to do.

So when he wakes up early one evening – early enough that he can sense the sun’s still up – and he can hear Raleigh moving around downstairs, Chuck has to fight the frantic urge to go down and see him. Raleigh will come to him when he’s ready, he tells himself, which sounds like a load of bullshit, but it’s really all Chuck’s got. He just lays there, staring through the darkness at the rafters above him, and he can hear the refrigerator door open – it creaks a little when you pull it too slowly – and he knows Raleigh’s checking to see how much blood they have left.

The answer’s none. Chuck drank the last of it about two days earlier. Which he would have told Raleigh, had Raleigh not been avoiding him like a finicky jackass. It’s all Raleigh’s fault. Like always. And Chuck tries to pretend he doesn’t notice how immature and childish that line of thought is.

After a minute or so, he hears Raleigh tramp through the foyer, can hear him take his coat from the hook on the wall, and then the front door opens and closes. Chuck waits, his ears strained, just in case Raleigh comes back because he forgot something, but a dead silence settles over the house, and he figures it’s safe to come out.

He’s careful as he climbs down the attic ladder, not wanting to find himself in front of an open window – they keep the curtains drawn most of the time, and the sun’s setting, so even if a stray beam of light hit him, he’s sure it would be too weak to do much harm, but still. The hallway is dark, though, the window at the end covered with the heavy black drapes Raleigh had hung when they’d first arrived.

Though Chuck had originally intended to go downstairs, he instead finds himself making his way to Raleigh’s room. He hesitates outside the door before saying aloud, “Fuck it,” and shoving his way inside. He’s never been in there, which seems strange, considering how long they’ve lived together, and it’s plain and sparsely decorated – there’s just a large bed, a dresser against the opposite wall, and a couple of end tables that look like they’re going to collapse under the weight of the antique lamps on them.

Though there’s curtains above the window, they’re parted slightly, allowing a dim light in from outside. Chuck skirts his way over to pull them closed, enveloping the room in shadow. Then he turns, sweeps his gaze over the room, and he makes his way to the bed hesitantly, like he’s afraid he’s going to be caught. He sits down on the edge of the mattress – it’s been, god, it’s been so long since he’s even been in a room that had a _real_ bed in it, he realizes. He lays down on his back and looks up at the ceiling, and he kind of feels a little underwhelmed – it’s no more comfortable than lying in the attic. It’s disappointing, but also a little sad.

So Chuck rolls over to try and get more comfortable, shoving his arms up under the pillow as he buries his face in it. Raleigh’s scent washes over him – his soap, sweat, and that one smell that’s just so distinctly _him_ – and Chuck feels something of a spark somewhere inside him. Though it’s not a discomfort to him in any way, it’s a simple fact that he’s always cold – and not just to the touch, it’s an internal feeling too, he just feels like his bones are carved from ice. But this smell makes him feel almost… warm. It’s like a memory of what it feels like to be warm.

His fangs slowly extend on their own, gums tingling, and his senses kick into overdrive. He inhales deeply, opening his mouth against the pillowcase for more. He replays the last time he’d fed from Raleigh in his mind. First lets himself remember the feeling of his fangs sinking into Raleigh’s skin, that first taste of blood as it’d hit Chuck’s lips – Raleigh tastes so sweet and alive, it’s unreal. Chuck presses the pillow tighter to his face and next thinks about the sounds Raleigh had made – the gasps, the way his heart had beat in his chest, and that one moan he’d given while one of his hands had been buried in Chuck’s hair. The moan that had made it seem like Raleigh had been enjoying it.

Chuck’s hips squirm a bit as he feels himself harden. One would think it’s impossible for his body to react in such a way, him being a vampire and all, but Chuck’s done trying to figure out his physiology. He rolls onto his back again, basking in the scent that’s engulfed him, and he looks down at the growing bulge in his pants. He almost wants to laugh because this is the most human he’s felt in a long time, even with his fangs out like this, and distracted by the giddiness he feels in the situation, he reaches down and cups himself through his jeans.

It’s like his body’s finally been woken up from a slumber that’s lasted way too long. He’d forgotten the simplicity of the pleasure that comes from just touching yourself, forgotten what it’d even felt like to desire someone like this. And this time he _does_ laugh, because of all the bloody people in the world, it’s Raleigh fucking Becket who’s giving him an erection the size of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

_And why not?_ he asks himself. Raleigh’s the only person he’s had contact with in months, the only person he’s seen since Striker Eureka went up – and more than that, they’ve actually developed a weird sort of relationship. At first, he knows it was just Raleigh being Raleigh, being the good little savior he is and wanting to do what’s right. But they care for one another now, he thinks. They actually like each other.

And Chuck’s never wanted anyone as badly as he wants Raleigh. He’d felt Raleigh’s cock against his leg when they’d lain in the attic together, and he’d known that – in that moment, at least – Raleigh had wanted him in return. Chuck’s never been kissed the way Raleigh had kissed him that day. He’s never been on the receiving end of such fierce passion from anyone. He has to reckon it’s why Raleigh’s avoiding him; maybe he’s embarrassed, maybe he feels guilty, maybe he’s disgusted with himself, even.

They need to talk about it, Chuck decides.

He’s mentally rehearsing what he wants to say when he hears movement downstairs. He’d been so caught up in his lust that he hadn’t noticed Raleigh’s return. He jumps out of the bed, hesitating and looking down with a hint of shame at the shape in his pants, and he makes his way to the door. As he pokes his head out into the hallway, however, he catches a scent that is decidedly _not_ Raleigh’s. This scent is bitter and sour, and it clings to the back of Chuck’s throat, leaving a bad, acidic taste in his mouth.

As quietly as he can – which is pretty damn quiet, now that he’s dead – Chuck creeps from the room and makes his way down the hall. He stops at the top of the stairs to listen , and he can hear that whoever it is is in the living room, their heart racing erratically in their chest. For the briefest of moments, Chuck almost worries – what is he supposed to do? Does he let them take whatever they want and leave? Does he confront them? Does he call someone?

But then the nervousness turns to something else. He gets angry.

He carefully navigates the stairs, avoiding all the ones that creak, and he edges to the doorway of the living room to peer in. The curtains in the room are completely drawn, bathing the room in shadow, and the intruder has a flashlight in his hand as he searches the room. _Stealing_ , Chuck thinks, vexed.

He steps forward into the room, and sensing his presence, the man spins to face him. The beam of his flashlight dances all around Chuck, and Chuck doesn’t even blink as it hits him square in the face.

“ _Shit_! I thought – I didn’t think anyone was here!” the man yelps. Acts as if it’s some sort of apology, like it’s just an honest mistake. And that irritates Chuck further. “Oh, _fuck_.”

“You stealing from us, mate?” Chuck asks, taking a step towards him. His voice sounds dangerously low, even to his own ears, but he likes it. His gums have been tingling since he’d lain eyes on the man – he doesn’t much care for the sour stench of this man’s fear, but he can hear the blood pumping through his veins, and it _has_ been a few days since he’s fed.

The man’s babbling, starts to say something that sounds an awful lot like, “Please, I’m sorry,” but the words die in his throat. His eyes go wide as his whole body freezes up, rooting him to the spot, and Chuck can see the last hint of color drain from the man’s face. “What the…?” he asks, and hesitantly, he aims the flashlight at Chuck’s face again.

Chuck’s fangs have been out this whole time, since Raleigh’s bedroom.

The next few moments seem to happen so quickly it feels like a weird dream. The intruder’s gaze darts to the hallway – no doubt, he’s trying to plan out a quick escape – and Chuck realizes that he can’t let him leave. If this guy leaves, he’s going to tell someone. As far as anyone in town knows, Raleigh Becket lives alone – if they find out about Chuck, even if they don’t necessarily believe whatever this man tells them, things could change. And Chuck can’t have that. He can’t have things changing.

So when he makes his move, a mad sprint for the hall, Chuck acts on instinct, lunging after him. The man happens to slip away from him – hey, Chuck’s still new at this – and he turns to Chuck, jerking a hand up towards him. At first, Chuck thinks he’s throwing his flashlight at him, but in the next instant, there’s a deafening _bang_. Chuck doesn’t even realize he’s been shot by a gun until he looks down at his left shoulder – the sharp, burning pain is delayed, and he hisses through his fangs when it registers.

He looks back up at the intruder, who’s still aiming the handgun at him. And suddenly, Chuck finds himself thinking about Raleigh. What if Raleigh had been there? What if the man had shot him instead? Chuck will live – he can already feel his body working against the wound, it’ll repair itself in moments and he’ll be good as new – but an injury like this could have seriously harmed Raleigh.

Could have killed him.

Red blurs at the corners of Chuck’s vision. And teeth and gums aching, he gives in to the angry haze. He feeds.

 

*

 

After leaving Fairbanks Memorial, Raleigh finds himself sitting in his truck in a 7-Eleven parking lot, flipping through the tiny notebook he uses for his hospital contacts. The hardest thing about taking care of Chuck has to be getting the blood bags – there’s only so many times you can bribe a staff member before they start prying and asking questions. He has absolutely no idea what he’s going to do if – no, _when_ – that happens. He’s been thinking that maybe he ought to try and get a job at the hospital, janitorial work or something; maybe he’d be able to figure out some way to get what he needs.

The ride back to the cabin is a long one – mostly because he takes his time and drives as slowly as he can. He tells himself it’s because he just needs to consider everything, needs to think up what they’re going to do, but he can’t keep the charade up long, even with himself. He’s avoiding Chuck, plain and simple. He’s been avoiding him for over a week now, locking himself up in his bedroom at night, where he lays on his bed and listens to Chuck wander the house like a ghost – bored and trapped there. And lonely, no doubt. Which makes Raleigh feel horrible, but it’s better than the alternative.

He likes Chuck. He _desires_ him. He’d thought it was just a natural reaction to Chuck biting him, he’d thought it was something he’d only ever feel when Chuck fed from him. But it’s so much more than that. He hasn’t just grown used to Chuck’s company, but has come to crave it, and he finds himself wishing for little things in Chuck’s presence – he likes making Chuck laugh, however rare that is, and he likes it when Chuck touches him, he likes feeling that raw, underlying power in his touch.  He’s developed feelings for Chuck, even if he doesn’t know exactly what those feelings are, and it’s like they’ve come completely out of left field.

And there’s a million things wrong with that, isn’t there? The first of which being that Chuck’s Chuck, and before, they’d only just barely tolerated one another. The second, of course, being that Chuck’s not even human anymore.

And there’s a part of Raleigh that almost feels like he’d be taking advantage of Chuck were he to act on these feelings. Chuck may be a vampire – or whatever the hell it is that he’s turned into – but he’s still in such a fragile state. He’s alone and confused, and Raleigh hates to think Chuck might have just gone along with what’d happened in the attic because he thought he owes something to Raleigh for taking care of him like this.

They need to talk about it, Raleigh figures.

He can’t keep running away from this – the only time in his life he was ever a runner was after Yancy, and he’s always regretted it. He’s no coward. He can face things head-on and he can come out on top, he knows this. He proved it with the Kaiju. He needs to suck it up and do what’s right, because damn, this is no way to treat his only friend in the world these days.

When he gets home, though, something doesn’t feel quite right.

He parks and squints through the windshield at the darkened house, like he thinks if he concentrates hard enough, he’ll be able to magically know what room Chuck is in and what he’s doing. For a long moment, he just sits there, his stomach tight and uneasy for reasons he can’t even fathom, but then a strange worry for Chuck’s safety settles in him, and he scrambles out of the truck. Leaving the cooler of blood bags he’d brought home, he jogs up to the porch, unlocking the door and slipping inside as fast as he can.

He flips the light switch as he goes, since by now the house is almost totally dark. But the smell hits him in the instant just before the lamp comes to life – coppery and rusty, the sort of smell that sticks in your throat. And then the room’s bathed in light and Raleigh sees it – the red _everywhere_.

Chuck’s in the center of the room, had been standing with his back to the doorway, and he turns to Raleigh, looking like a child who’s just gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar. If that child had sharp fangs and blood all over his chin, dripping down his front.

“Raleigh,” he says, strangely blank-sounding. His eyes are inexpressive, emotionless, and Raleigh’s stomach clenches harder because this is how Chuck had acted after he’d killed that girl. “I was going to have this cleaned up before you got back….” He turns and looks at the mess.

Raleigh doesn’t recognize the man lying in a heap on the floor, and not just because his throat’s been torn out. A sick sort of relief sweeps through him at that, because at least this guy isn’t a town local, he thinks. And his next thought is, _Good thing there are so many missing people in Alaska, just like that detective said_ , but he buries that thought deep inside before it can make him feel guilty. He raises his gaze back to Chuck, wants to say something, but words are failing him.

“We were out of blood,” Chuck says, still expressionless. Dead.

Raleigh stares at him for a good hard moment, his mind racing with all that needs to be done. And finally, he nods. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy when he’d first decided to take Chuck in – and especially after Chuck had killed those people so early on, he’d been well aware that it could happen again. Had expected it, even. He feels like he doesn’t have any right to be surprised or upset, even though he is, very much so, and he knows he needs to take care of this right away. He nods again, mostly to himself, and he shrugs out of his coat to hang it on the hook on the wall – it’ll just get in the way when he’s cleaning.

“I didn’t go looking for something to eat,” Chuck says. His eyes seem to come back to life, searching Raleigh’s face intensely. Raleigh darts his own gaze away, uncertain of how he feels having Chuck stare at him so hard, and a hint of emotion comes back into Chuck’s voice as he adds, “He broke in.”

“He what?”

“Kitchen window,” Chuck says.

Raleigh murmurs a curse, but all he can do is nod some more, because he can’t really speak – he doesn’t know what to say. Because it’s hard to talk to Chuck when he’s covered in blood like this. It’s different when he feeds from Raleigh – it’s always just a little bit, and it’s Raleigh’s, and that makes it okay. But this is so much more. This is so much worse.

“He had a gun. He _shot_ me,” Chuck says, voice getting louder, more emotional. He jabs a finger at his left shoulder and Raleigh notices the tear in his shirt, and for a split second, he almost panics. Then he remembers Chuck can heal.

“Alright – self-defense,” Raleigh says. He moves around Chuck, feeling like he’s going to throw up, but knowing he needs to get the body out of the house. But Chuck suddenly grabs him by the front of his shirt and shoves him up against the wall – Raleigh flinches as his back hits, because Chuck still doesn’t know his own strength sometimes. “Damnit, _Chuck_ , I have to take care of this.”

“It wasn’t self-defense,” Chuck says. He seems angry. He’s looking at Raleigh like Raleigh’s missing the point of something, and Raleigh just wants to sit down, he just wants to take a breather and get himself together.

So he nods. “Alright. It wasn’t self-defense –”

“He might have shot you if you were here. He might have killed you,” Chuck bites out through his fangs. But his eyes are wide with something Raleigh can’t place, and it looks like there’s a sea of conflicting emotions raging in him, which is almost hilarious considering how lifeless he’d seemed at first. “I just – I got angry. I was protecting this house, yeah? My family?”

Raleigh softens at that. Knows he needs to give Chuck the validation he needs. Without any thought to it, he reaches up and puts a hand on Chuck’s shoulder. “Yeah – I know.”

Chuck studies him again, then blinks and ducks his head. “You weren’t here – I was so hungry,” he says, sounding accusatory. Then he makes a strained little noise in his throat and shakes his head. “And I knew you were bringing it home, I knew….”

He makes another noise, and it’s like he’s _too_ emotional now. Raleigh’s starting to think that this is too much, taking care of Chuck is too hard – he can’t do it anymore. He’d been wrong before, _this_ is the breaking point. But then he remembers that he’s not alone in this, has to tell himself that it isn’t at all any easier on Chuck. In life, Chuck might have been an asshole fueled on by his own insecurities, but he never would have wanted to become this – Raleigh can’t even come close to imagining what this must be like to be in Chuck’s shoes.

So he swallows back his worsening nausea, and he slides his hand from Chuck’s shoulder to the side of his neck, avoiding most of the blood. “Hey… it’s gonna be alright, okay? I promise.”

Chuck’s grasp on him has loosened, so he starts to move away, because that body is going to start stinking soon, and he just wants it out of the house. But Chuck grabs him again. Pulls Raleigh to him and clings to him like a child. And though Raleigh’s natural instinct is to pull away – mostly because now he’s covered in blood, and now he really wants to vomit – Raleigh cares too much for Chuck to deny him this comfort. He stiffly wraps around his arms around Chuck, forcing himself to ignore the odor of blood and death.

“I’m sorry,” Chuck says softly, his fangs just about brushing against Raleigh’s neck as he speaks. A sane person should have been afraid, considering Chuck doesn’t at all seem like he’s in his right mind, but Raleigh figures he’s far from sane these days.

“I forgive you.”

Chuck pulls him in tighter. Things are so fucked, Raleigh thinks. But he’s in too deep by now – and even seeing this, he knows his feelings for Chuck haven’t changed. And that’s even more fucked. How did this happen?

 

*

_And I promise you that I’ll stand right by your side,_

_Forever and always, until the day I die._

_– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu_

*

Raleigh doesn’t get a chance to talk to Chuck about why he’d been avoiding him. Chuck’s latest kill puts somewhat of a damper on the both of them – things had been going so well, they’d been doing so good – the fact that things could take a turn for the worst so quickly is disheartening, to say the least. And Raleigh has no one to blame but himself. Chuck’s still so new at this and Raleigh should have been more watchful and vigilant, should have taken better care of him. He’d gotten lazy, he figures. And another person had suffered because of it.

The few days following the bloodbath – because that’s what it’d been, Chuck had made a complete mess of the foyer and living room – are tense, and though Raleigh and Chuck don’t avoid one another, things aren’t the same between them. They don’t talk to each other much, and when they do, it’s to argue. Raleigh’s guilt makes Chuck angry, and he tries to convince Raleigh that any man who breaks into a house with a gun deserves such a fate, but Raleigh’s nowhere near being on board with that idea. And secretly, he thinks Chuck isn’t either. Some of their more intense arguments are Chuck blaming him for having avoided him, for having taken so long to get more blood, and Raleigh, even though he agrees that it’s his fault, ends up snapping once or twice and telling Chuck that it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been such a glutton.

So when Raleigh walks in after visiting the hospital and Chuck’s waiting for him, Raleigh instantly tries to get away from him, ducks into the kitchen to try and avoid him. He’s not in the mood to argue again – not after such an unsuccessful trip. He’d actually contemplated going somewhere else, a hotel maybe, just so he wouldn’t have to come home as empty-handed as he was now.

“What’s wrong?” Chuck demands, following right on his heels.

Raleigh shakes his head. He goes to the fridge under the guise of wanting something to drink, but it’s mostly just so he can look busy with something.

“Don’t bloody do that, Raleigh. Don’t treat me like I’m some sort of idiot.”

Raleigh stays there for a second, just staring into the mostly empty fridge, and then he turns to face Chuck, mind working wildly to come up with a way to explain just how fucked they are. The words don’t come, however, and he shakes his head, snorting a little, and he throws an arm out at his side uselessly, taking a quick, shaky breath. There’s an almost physical weight resting on his shoulders and he feels so close to buckling under it, so close to just giving up for a final time. And it seems that Chuck can sense this – he watches Raleigh, frowning so hard that lines appear in his forehead.

“What’s wrong?” he asks again, and this time his tone is a little lighter.

“They don’t want me coming around the hospital anymore….”

Chuck tenses visibly, but doesn’t say anything, and Raleigh’s words seem to echo uncomfortably in the empty house. Raleigh shuffles a little, moves away from the fridge and leans a hip against the counter, crossing his arms and looking down at the floor because he can’t stand to look at Chuck – he feels like he’s failing him. Chuck doesn’t take his eyes off of him, however, continues to stare, and Raleigh just stands there like a moron. He’s kind of surprised, truthfully, that Chuck’s being so quiet – he’d expected more of an argument by now.

“What are we…?” Chuck starts to ask slowly, apparently just as lost as Raleigh is.

“There’s a clinic – between here and Anchorage – they won’t have a lot of blood, but combining it with how often you drink from me….” Raleigh trails off because he knows that would never work. He could never get enough blood from a clinic that size – they’d be lucky if the clinic even carried more than a handful of bags. “Or maybe I could get a job at Alaska Regional or something.”

“Anchorage is like six bloody hours away,” Chuck says skeptically.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Raleigh snaps. He reaches up and digs his palms into his eyes until they’re sore and he’s seeing spots, grinding his teeth together in frustration. “I wish Yancy were here.” Yancy could have come up with something. Yancy could fix anything. 

Chuck takes a slow step towards him, almost like he’s hesitant, and he says, “I can do better. I can get by on less blood than before. Maybe I only need yours –”

Raleigh shakes his head. “You can’t live on just mine. I don’t have enough. You could take too much and you could –”

“ _I would never_ ,” Chuck all but snarls at him. “And that you’re implying that I would –”

“I’m implying that you _could_. You could lose control –”

“I wouldn’t –”

“– just like you did with those others,” Raleigh finishes, loud enough to talk over him. He meets his gaze, and though he hesitates because he doesn’t want to make Chuck feel bad, this is something that needs to be addressed. “You could kill me, Chuck.”

Chuck’s whole body jerks like he’s just been doused in boiling hot water, his expression going tight with anger. He glares through narrowed eyes at Raleigh, his fists clenching at his sides, and though his mouth opens a little, he doesn’t speak – what can he say? The smell of death still lingers in the foyer, a testament to just how hard it is for him to control his urges.

Raleigh looks back down at the floor, rubbing absently at his neck – where the bite marks are. It’s become somewhat of a nervous habit for him, something he does more times in a day than he can count. “That first night – back in Kowloon Bay….” Raleigh trails off, doesn’t know where to go from there.

“I was different then,” Chuck says quickly. “That wasn’t me.”

“I had to fight you to get you off me…. What if I hadn’t been able to do it? I’ve seen the people who haven’t been so lucky.”

Chuck snorts crossly, sounding much like an irate bull, and he shakes his head. “They weren’t you.” His voice is a low rumble – this is much different from the anger Raleigh’s used to, which is of the ‘yelling-as-loud-as-you-can-and-throwing-anything-you-can-reach’ variety. This sort of anger is much more… intimate. More personal.

“I’m not saying this so you can stand there and tell me how special I am compared to them,” Raleigh says. “I’m saying this because – well, shit, Chuck, one of us has to think about it.”

And suddenly, Chuck is _right there_. Raleigh flattens himself against the counter, taking a defensive stance because he thinks Chuck is ready to fight. But instead, all Chuck does is grab him roughly by the side of his neck. A part of Raleigh wants to pull away, and another sad, pathetic part of him wants to lean into the touch – this is the closest they’ve been since they’d cleaned up the burglar’s body together. Instead, all he can do is stand stock still, staring at Chuck’s unreadable face.

Chuck studies him for what feels like an eternity. His eyes are hard and intense, clouded with thought, and Raleigh can’t even begin to guess what’s going on in his mind. His grasp on Raleigh’s neck is unyielding, almost too firm, and Raleigh realizes a little belatedly that one of his own hands has come up and is resting against Chuck’s wrist, ready to fight back if need be.

At last, Chuck blinks and his expression comes back to life. His nostrils flare a little, he bares his teeth – his normal, human teeth, surprisingly, the fangs are nowhere to be seen – and his eyes are dark and hinting at things Raleigh’s better off not thinking about. “I would sooner kill myself than hurt you, _Raleigh_ ,” he says quietly, only the words come out on a mocking sneer. Like he blames Raleigh for himself holding such a sentiment. It could sound compassionate had it come from someone else, but Chuck says it like it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Says his name like it’s a curse word.

Raleigh swallows and the motion draws Chuck’s gaze. As if he’s only just now realizing how near he is to Raleigh, like he doesn’t at all remember closing the distance between them, he slowly reclaims his hand and takes a small step back. He starts to turn away, ducking his head almost submissively, like it’s his way of apologizing for getting in Raleigh’s face, and something about it just breaks something in Raleigh.

Lurching forward, he grabs and tugs on the front of Chuck’s shirt, and getting the picture, Chuck returns to him, leaning in and meeting Raleigh’s mouth with his own. The kiss is hard and nearly bruising, and Chuck crowds Raleigh against the counter again, his hands going to Raleigh’s waist as Raleigh’s fist into the material of his shirt. There’s a small voice in the back of Raleigh’s mind that’s telling him what an idiot he is, that this is no time for him to act on his feelings for Chuck – feelings that he shouldn’t at all have in the first place, mind you. But he needs this. He needs to feel something other than the worthlessness that’s been bubbling in him, the guilt and shame that eat away at him day in and day out. Just something to help alleviate the weight crushing his shoulders.

And this? Isn’t enough.

With a burst of strength, he turns them – he shoves Chuck up against the counter this time, and Chuck, despite being more than capable of fighting it, lets him. Raleigh breaks the kiss for only an instant, long enough for Chuck to murmur his name against his lips – and this time, Chuck almost sounds like he’s savoring the word.

Raleigh shoves both hands into Chuck’s hair, earning the tiniest hum of appreciation from the vampire. He grazes his teeth over Chuck’s bottom lip, like he’s testing out whether or not Chuck’ll like it, and Chuck’s only response is to do the same to him. It’s not the sort of kiss you’d see in a particularly romantic movie scene, it’s a lot of lips and teeth, and it’s hard and direct. The whole being dead thing means Chuck doesn’t need to breathe, of course, so there’s no stopping him – he’s relentless in his passion, like he’s trying to steal the very life from Raleigh.

Raleigh pulls on Chuck’s hair like he means to stop him, and Chuck lets up a little, and then Raleigh takes control again, thrusting his tongue into Chuck’s mouth. He flicks it over Chuck’s teeth, wondering – maybe a little hopefully – about the reaction it’ll bring, and sure enough, Chuck makes small noise, this one sounding almost surprised. His fangs extend into their fine points on their own, Raleigh can feel, and he wonders in the back of his mind if that’s something Chuck can control or if it’s always automatic. He presses his tongue very lightly against one of the sharp tips, and a groan leaves Chuck like it feels good. 

Chuck, whose hands have once more found Raleigh’s hips, pulls Raleigh closer, and at the same time, he arches against him. Raleigh instinctively mirrors the motion, and he realizes that Chuck’s cock is already hard and pushing against the denim of his pants – a realization that goes straight to Raleigh’s head, that spark of desire igniting into something more desperate. Emboldened by the knowledge that Chuck wants him so badly, Raleigh slides a hand down Chuck’s front and grabs him through his jeans, squeezes him hard. Chuck breaks the kiss by turning his head, and a weak, would-be breathless moan leaves him.

Chuck throws him a little scowl. “Does it look like I want you to stop?” he counters through his fangs, low and husky.

Raleigh can’t help but to give a little chuckle at that, despite everything. Because he can let himself get caught up in this and he can forget all the other stuff, even if only for the time being. Chuck starts to roll his eyes, so Raleigh squeezes him again, and Chuck’s hips jerk forward as though by their own will. Raleigh feels a little guilty for it, but he finds himself really enjoying this – having control. He’s just a human, he has no power over Chuck whatsoever, can’t make him do anything. Can’t even keep him from hurting other people.

But at this moment in time, Chuck is like putty in his hands. And it’s addictive.

Only, he’s far too quiet for Raleigh’s taste – normal human Chuck would have had his cheeks flushed red and would have been panting, if not gasping for more, but instead, Chuck’s colorless as ever and completely silent. Raleigh can fix that, he figures. And he leans in to press his lips to the spot just beneath Chuck’s ear, giving him another hard squeeze through his jeans just as he grazes his teeth over Chuck’s cool skin.

And sure enough, Chuck moans, though it turns into a low irritable curse, as if he’s mad at himself for it. But Raleigh’s pleased with it. More pleased than he cares to admit, even to himself. Unable to stop himself, he smiles into Chuck’s neck.

 

*

 

No one has ever touched Chuck like this but Chuck himself, and that had always been rushed and aggressive – like a lot of things Chuck did when he was alive. It’s just that there was a war going on, had been going on since he was a kid, and he hadn’t been a Ranger just for the fame and status. He’d been in it to fight Kaiju. To protect people. So even though he’d had men and women across the board interested in him, he’d never taken any of them up on their offers.

He sort of wishes that he had now, so he hadn’t died a twenty-one year old virgin.

But then Raleigh’s hand is starting to move against him, not just squeezing him but stroking too, and Chuck can no longer think about all the could-have-beens. An embarrassing little sound leaves him again, though he tries to bite it back – god damn Raleigh for making him moan and whine like this. He rolls his hips, pressing against Raleigh’s hand, and his own grasp tightens on Raleigh’s waist, needing more of him, needing more of his warmth. He doesn’t want to act so desperate and needy like this, it’s just what Raleigh’s turned him into. Even though he can hear Raleigh’s heart beating, can practically smell the blood in his veins, Chuck feels human like this. That alone is the best feeling in the world.

And Raleigh doesn’t even know. The stupid idiot has no clue what he does to Chuck.

It also feels a little good to let Raleigh have control like this, not that Chuck would ever admit that. He likes that Raleigh’s other hand still has a firm hold in his hair, and he likes that Raleigh’s handling him so rough – like he’s daring Chuck to even think about trying to take over. Though his fangs are out and aching something terrible, Chuck doesn’t feel like he normally does when he wants blood – it’s like his desire for Raleigh is canceling out his hunger, and it makes him desperate for even more of it.

“Raleigh, I…” he murmurs before he can stop himself, but he trails off, not really knowing where he’d wanted to go with that.

Raleigh’s hand leaves his hair, slides to his shoulder, and then trails down his arm. He grabs Chuck’s wrist, pulling his hand and guiding it, and Chuck’s too curious to pull back. When he finds his hand being directed to Raleigh’s crotch, Raleigh pressing Chuck’s fingers against the bulge in his own pants, Chuck knows he’d probably be blushing if he were human. And the notion kind of pisses Chuck off, and he almost jerks his hand away just to be an asshole. But Raleigh lets go of his wrist and his hand returns to Chuck’s head, fingers carding through his hair like that’s what they were made to do, and Chuck is lost to how much he wants him.

He follows Raleigh’s lead, starts to mirror what Raleigh’s doing to him as best as he can. It’s one thing touching yourself, but it’s completely different touching someone else, even if they have the same working parts as you. He shapes his fingers around Raleigh’s half-hardened cock through his pants, and he squeezes a little, tentatively. Raleigh presses into him, his breath catching in his throat nearly imperceptibly, his kisses halting as his lips part silently against Chuck’s neck. It’s a small sensation but it feels electric, so Chuck squeezes Raleigh again, harder this time. And this time, a low noise leaves Raleigh, breathy and so very human, and Chuck’s gums and fangs twinge painfully.

Abruptly, Raleigh pulls away just a little, and he looks down at what he’s doing as both of his hands go to the front of Chuck’s jeans. Chuck watches too, feeling like he’s dreaming – which is a funny feeling, since he hasn’t dreamed since the day he died – and Raleigh undoes the button fly violently, like he’s pissed at it for even existing. Chuck opens his mouth to speak, feels stupidly sheepish and insecure, but Raleigh crushes their mouths together in a bruising kiss again, cutting the words off before they even come out.

His slides one of his hands into Chuck’s pants and since Chuck isn’t wearing anything underneath them, Raleigh’s skin is against Chuck’s right away. It’s so warm that it feels like Raleigh must have fire running through his veins, and he almost hisses in surprise against Raleigh’s mouth at the contact. Raleigh wraps his fingers around the base of Chuck’s cock, and he doesn’t waste any time in starting to stroke him, and Chuck’s glad he has the counter behind him because Raleigh’s touch feels so good that he’s sure his knees tremble a little. He does break the kiss this time, but only so he can bite out a hoarse curse, his hips starting to move on their own, and he ducks his head because even though this white hot pleasure is engulfing him, he’s still a little embarrassed that Raleigh’s undone him so easily.

Raleigh pushes against him and Chuck realizes he’d stopped squeezing him, had just been standing there with his hand over Raleigh’s crotch, too mesmerized by what Raleigh’s doing to continue. He quickly takes back up, palming Raleigh’s cock again, and he brings his other hand up to the zipper on Raleigh’s pants. For all his inhuman grace, he fumbles with the fly and it takes him a little longer than it should to get Raleigh’s pants open – he blames Raleigh, who’s hand is moving in long, slow pumps that are nearly torturous.

He dips his hand into Raleigh’s pants and underwear, and before his uncertainty can stall him, he grabs Raleigh’s cock. Like before, he simply tries to emulate what Raleigh’s doing to him, and he figures he must be doing it right, because a short groan leaves Raleigh, his fingers going a little tighter around Chuck. Chuck raises his gaze finally, and he finds that Raleigh’s staring at him. Their eyes meet and lock, and Raleigh brings his free hand up, returning it to Chuck’s hair like he wants to hold him place, like he refuses to let Chuck look away now that they’re watching one another like this.

It ends just as quickly as it’d started.

They stand there, bodies flush against one another, with just enough room to maneuver, and they jerk each other off like sex-starved teenagers or something. Though Chuck is thrusting against Raleigh like he can get more – and Christ, does he need more – and though Raleigh’s breathing is out of control and short, they don’t take their eyes off one another the entire time. It’s Chuck who comes first, which is a blissful feeling in and of itself, the fact that he can still come in this state. He arches against the counter, spitting out a string of curses that ends in Raleigh’s name, and his hold on Raleigh’s cock unintentionally squeezes almost too hard – but surprisingly, it seems like Raleigh enjoys it. Judging by the fact that Raleigh hits his own climax only a few seconds after.

After he comes, Raleigh just about lays against Chuck, who’s only able to stay upright because of the counter digging into his ass. In this position, Raleigh’s face is buried in Chuck’s neck – he’s panting, breath hot against Chuck’s skin, as he tries to come down from his orgasm – and Chuck’s is buried in his, vice versa. He realizes all too suddenly how loud and fast Raleigh’s pulse is, and his fangs tingle.

He brushes his lips against Raleigh’s neck, tastes the sheen of sweat clinging to his flushed skin, and Raleigh tenses very slightly, swallowing audibly. But he doesn’t move away, doesn’t say anything, and so Chuck bites him. He doesn’t take much, but what he does drink seems to taste better than ever – in the afterglow of an orgasm he wasn’t sure he could even have, Raleigh’s blood is sweeter than usual and seems ten times more fulfilling. Chuck can’t help the grateful noise he makes as he takes a pull of it, savoring the slow way it slides down his throat.

For now, everything feels right in the world, even being dead and all.

When they finally disentangle themselves, Raleigh moves away from Chuck, and though he’ll take it to his grave, Chuck inwardly mourns the loss of his warmth. One hand covering the bite on his neck, the other holding his pants up, Raleigh wearily mumbles something about the bathroom and starts to walk away.

“Raleigh,” Chuck says. And when the other man turns to look at him, eyebrows going up a little, Chuck almost panics because he hadn’t actually planned on saying anything. He shakes his head a little and says, “You’ll – we’ll figure something out, yeah?”

Raleigh just looks at him for a moment. A long moment. Then he blinks slowly, mouth twitching in a way that says he wants to give Chuck a reassuring smile but can’t quite get his face to work right, and he nods before he turns and leaves the kitchen. Chuck looks down at his open jeans, at the mess inside them – damnit, Raleigh – and he wants to be angry at himself for the thoughts that run through his head, the emotions you’d think a dead man can no longer feel.

Raleigh is everything to him. And he can no longer pretend otherwise.

 

*

_Right now you’re the only one who understands my plight._

_Right now you’re the only reason I can’t sleep through the night._

_– “Corseting,” Atreyu_

*

 


	2. Chapter 2

Raleigh is able to guilt trip his original hospital contact into making a new deal with him. More money for less blood, but at least it gives him time to figure something else out. Though he knows Chuck makes a conscious effort to say ‘we’ whenever they talk about it, Raleigh doesn’t really expect much – how can Chuck even help? He thinks it just makes Chuck feel a little better to say that sort of thing, and he figures he’s okay with that.

They don’t talk about _it_. The happening in the kitchen. The whole jacking-one-another-off-like-they’d-die-without-it thing. Raleigh’s not embarrassed that it’d happened, and he doesn’t think Chuck is either – hell, Raleigh would say it was actually about time, considering all the dancing around it they’d been doing – it’s just… not something either of them seems to know how to bring up. How would you even go about something like that? ‘ _Hey, that thing we did? That was awesome, we should do it more. Only this time, you should bite me right as I’m coming because I’m a crazy weird idiot and have some kind of a stupid kink involving your stupid fangs_?’

So Raleigh doesn’t say anything. And they don’t come close to touching one another like that again. Like the thirst had been quenched and it’s no longer necessary – a few days pass and they don’t even kiss or anything.

Early one evening, after waking up, Raleigh’s sitting at the table in the kitchen, reading the newspaper he’d picked up in town on his most recent visit, with a bowl of oatmeal that’d gone cold in front of him. He’s mostly just stirring it around and around in the bowl – it’s a little too watery, ‘oatmeal soup’ as Yancy would have called it – but every now and then he takes a bite, keeping his gaze on the paper. Chuck had come into the room at some point – Raleigh had flashed him a half-smile and a mumbled, “Evening,” which he’s gotten used to saying by now after he wakes up. Now Chuck’s sitting across from him, watching him like a hawk, like he has something to say, and Raleigh has to try very hard to pretend not to notice.

Taking a quick bite, Raleigh happens to see, out of the corner of his eye, the cringe that Chuck gives. And it’s the final straw. In one motion, Raleigh drops the paper on the table and drops the spoon into the bowl, and he lifts his head to look at Chuck. He raises his eyebrows. Chuck shifts a little in the chair, blinks lazily, but doesn’t say anything.

“What?” Raleigh asks.

“How can you eat that shit? Especially now that it’s more like roadside slush in a bowl than anything even remotely resembling food.”

Raleigh looks at the oatmeal, then back at Chuck. He shrugs a shoulder. And to make a point, picks up the spoon and takes another bite. “Just ‘cause you’re super picky about what you eat these days…” he says, and he goes back to the newspaper.

“Oh, you’re so very funny,” Chuck says.

“I try.”

As Raleigh attempts to finish the article he’d started, he can’t quite concentrate – his attention’s focused on Chuck, instead, who’s looking around the kitchen like he’s trying to find something to entertain him. Like a child. He even starts to tap one of his fingers on the table in a dull, rhythmless pattern that very quickly rides on Raleigh last nerve. He looks up again, once more raising his eyebrows.

Chuck crosses his arms over his chest, sitting back in his chair some. When he speaks, it’s casual and conversational. “We ought to get one of those boards to hang up, one of those ‘Such-and-Such Days Without an Accident’ sort of thing. Since I’m doing so good. Might boost the morale around here because, quite frankly, you’re a bit of a downer sometimes.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the downer?” Raleigh asks, and Chuck makes a skeptical face as though to suggest Raleigh’s crazy for doubting it. Raleigh realizes that Chuck is actually attempting to be humorous, is _joking_ with him, and he flashes a small grin. “Cute, Hansen.”

He folds up the newspaper, holds it out to Chuck in offering, and when Chuck looks at it like he’d rather file his fangs down than read the Fairbanks Daily, he tosses it onto the end of the table. He slides his oatmeal closer and stirs it again, picking up a spoonful and letting it drip back into the bowl, smirking a little at the expression that comes to Chuck’s face at the sound it makes.

“We had one of those boards,” Raleigh remarks after a beat. “At the Wall.”

Chuck snorts derisively. “Were there a lot of accidents?”

“Sure.” He takes a bite. “They didn’t exactly care about workplace safety with a war going on, you know.”

He doesn’t look up, but he feels Chuck watch him for a long, long moment. But then a humorless chuckle leaves the vampire. “Wouldn’t that have been something? The great Raleigh Becket felled by a bloody wall in the middle of a Kaiju apocalypse.”

Raleigh finishes his oatmeal and stands up, the table legs scraping the floor as he pushes it back. “Yeah, well, guess it’s a good thing that didn’t happen. Who else would take such good care of you like this?” he asks, maybe a little contemptuously, because if Chuck wants to mock him, he has no problem giving it right back.

And on his way to the sink, he reaches over and tousles Chuck’s hair. Chuck does what’s expected – he ducks away from the touch, batting Raleigh’s arm away – and Raleigh’s little grin returns. He washes his bowl quickly, with Chuck grumbling at him about something or another, and when he’s finished, he turns around to say something, crossing his arms and leaning a hip against the counter.

But at that exact moment, the ancient rotary phone on the wall rings.

As if by one mind, Raleigh and Chuck both look towards the phone, like neither of them had even known it was there. Then Chuck turns completely in his chair to stare at Raleigh, and Raleigh just stares back, bemused. He can count on his hands the number of times that phone has rung – and half of those times were when he’d called home to check in on Chuck when he was out. They don’t get visitors, and they don’t get calls; that’s just how it is.

When the phone continues to ring – and Chuck continues to stare at him – Raleigh pushes away from the sink and crosses the room. He answers like he’s in a horror film, like he expects some sort of serial killer or monster to be on the other end, which, hello, we got enough monsters at the Becket-Hansen residence, thank you. All he hears from the moment he picks up, however, is static.

“Hello?” he tries, just in case. The static crackles, there’s a brief pause in it, and then it returns as strong as ever. Chuck watches, furrowing his brow because his ears can pick up the interference even from where he is, and Raleigh shrugs at him. He listens for a moment longer and then hangs up. “Must have been a wrong number.”

“Had to have been,” Chuck agrees. “We don’t have exactly have any friends, now do we?”

That stings a little. Raleigh thinks of the people he’d come to look at as friends before he and Chuck had come out here – Mako, Tendo, the young couple who lived in the same complex back in Kowloon Bay. And he nods. “Yeah,” he says shortly. “Sure don’t.”

 

*

 

Television had always bored Chuck, but it especially bored him now that he was dead. Most of the stuff back then was about the Kaiju, and most of the stuff now is still about the Kaiju – he reckons something like that leaves a permanent stain on the world. He’ll probably be hearing about the Kaiju for the rest of his existence – which could very well turn out to be hundreds of years, since he still isn’t exactly sure about the whole aging thing yet.

After flipping between channels for a little while – the channels they get, at least, considering how poor reception is at the cabin – Chuck shuts the TV off and makes his way to the stairs. It’s almost sunrise, and he can hear Raleigh moving around in his room, and Chuck is sick to death – there’s a joke in there somewhere – of the way they’re tiptoeing around what’d happened between them. So he’s going to do what he does best – he’s going to corner Raleigh, back him into a wall, and force him to confront this thing. There’s two things that can happen after that: fists are going to fly, or mouths are going to collide, and Chuck figures, either way, at least he’ll have contact with Raleigh.

The minute that thought enters his mind, he strikes it out. How pathetic was that?

Raleigh’s door is slightly open, so Chuck peers into the room first, maybe a small, teensy tiny part of his brain hoping he’ll catch Raleigh in some sort of compromising position. But instead, Raleigh’s just fixing up the bed, fitting the mattress with a clean sheet. Chuck nudges the door open the rest of the way with a finger, and as he steps over the threshold into the room, Raleigh turns and glances up at him. He hesitates, sweeping his gaze over Chuck like he expected someone else, and then he turns back to the bed. Gestures blindly at a bundle of white on the floor – the old sheets, stained with something red.

“Pick at my neck sometimes when I’m sleeping. Don’t realize I’m doing it,” he says by way of explanation. “End up getting blood all over the place.”

“Smart,” Chuck says. And Raleigh snorts.

When Raleigh finishes and turns back to Chuck, Chuck has to feign an interest in the bedroom – he gazes around and pretends he’s never been in there before. It looks the exact same as it had the one and only time he’d seen it – when he’d come very close to jerking off in the bed, he thinks, with a little embarrassed look mattress. He does note one thing that’s different, however – a tin box on one of the bedside tables, like something someone would put keepsakes in. It wasn’t there that first time.

“So this is where you sleep,” he says, making his way further into the room. Towards the tin.

“It’s no cramped attic space, but it’s mine,” Raleigh says.

“Very quaint,” Chuck says sarcastically. “You should have been an interior decorator, Ray.”

“Har, har,” Raleigh says with a little roll of his eyes. He bends and grabs the bundle of blood-stained sheets and makes his way into the hallway with them, leaving Chuck in the room alone like he trusts him.

Big mistake.

Chuck all but glides the rest of the way to the end table, hastily popping off the lid of the tin box, and what he finds would have made his ears turn red if he were human: single packaged condoms and what looks like lubricant. A little box of goodies. He doesn’t know what to think at the sight of it all, and he doesn’t really get a chance to react before Raleigh comes back. He turns to him, but Raleigh doesn’t appear to have even noticed what he’s doing.

“You cheeky bastard,” Chuck says to get his attention.

Raleigh looks up, realizes he’s still holding the lid of his goody box, and he slaps his hands against his thighs, sliding them up to his hips. “ _Chuck_ ,” he says, sounding annoyed.

“You planning on using these on me?” Chuck asks, and god help him, he’s grinning. He can’t remember the last time he felt this utterly gleeful about something.

“I just – I got them just in case,” Raleigh says. He moves towards Chuck, snatches the lid out of his hand – Chuck lets him – and he slams it back onto the condom box with near enough force to turn it into a condom platter. “Since what happened, I wanted to… be prepared.”

“Since what happened,” Chuck echoes. “So are we finally going to talk about that?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Raleigh asks with a roll of his eyes, and he nears the window to pull the curtains closed. Over his shoulder, he tosses, “The part where I made you sing like a canary?”

Chuck’s grin turns into an embarrassed scowl, and he crosses his arms. “So you wanted to be prepared, yeah? For what?”

Chuck pauses. Watches as Raleigh pretends to be interested in the curtains. After tossing a sideways look back at the goody box, he says, “So let’s use ‘em.”

Raleigh visibly tenses, then slowly turns around. He gives Chuck a very cynical look, as if he thinks Chuck is making fun of him, and Chuck feels a little more embarrassed because how on earth do you even approach this thing? He has no idea and that’s completely humiliating – makes him jut out his jaw and puff up his chest. His insecurity is such a stupid, human feeling, but he tells himself that it’s better than feeling nothing at all.

“Use them?” Raleigh finally says.

Raleigh ducks his head with a sheepish laugh, and there’s a part of Chuck that feels reassured by it, but another part that gets irritated. Raleigh takes a few steps towards him – he strides all casual like, hasn’t lost his strut, even now – and he never takes his gaze off of Chuck. How can a human have such an intense and piercing gaze?

“You want to have sex?” Raleigh asks bluntly. And there it is, out there in the open for everyone to see, and Chuck just sort of blinks uselessly at him because Christ, is it _that_ easy to bring up for most people?

“Why not? I quite liked your hand on my dick the other day,” Chuck says, faking nonchalance.

“It’s not –” Raleigh cuts himself off, shakes his head, and when he looks back at Chuck, he raises his eyebrows a little, makes his gaze pointed and serious. “It’s not ‘just sex’ for me.”

Chuck nods. Agrees,. “Yeah.”

And Raleigh seems surprised at that. Like the idiot honestly thought that it would be just sex for Chuck. Like he has no idea that Chuck is hopelessly infatuated with and spends most of his time pathetically pining after him.

Chuck looks down at the floor. He’s suddenly aware of how close Raleigh is standing, the slow even tempo of the heart in his chest, the way he smells fresh like the plain bar soap he uses in the shower. “Raleigh, I like… _this_.” He gestures between them, meaning ‘whatever the hell this is,’ and he adds quietly, words stiff, “You make me feel human again.” He hates admitting it, loathes it with every fiber of his being, and he regrets the words the minute they leave his mouth.

He feels Raleigh’s eyes on him, but all he can do is look at the floor. And when he makes himself raise his gaze, Raleigh’s expression is too complicated to read – but Chuck had never been good at that anyway. Raleigh reaches up and cups Chuck’s jaw, and like always, his skin is so warm and alive that it feels like it’s thawing out the solid ice Chuck feels like he’s made of.

As Raleigh’s thumb traces the shape of Chuck’s mouth, follows the curve of his upper lip, Chuck can feel his fangs extend into place. Raleigh notices it too, his gaze flickering to Chuck’s mouth, and Chuck feels like he’s ruined the moment. That certain insecurity comes back full force, and he pulls away from Raleigh’s touch.

“Sorry, I –”

But before he can get out the awkward apology – which itself will surely embarrass him later when he remembers it – Raleigh kisses him. He grabs him roughly, takes him by the front of his shirt and yanks him forward – like he had that night in the kitchen – but the kiss is considerably lighter, almost like he’s expecting Chuck to protest. And if he truly believes that’ll happen, then he’s clearly dumber than Chuck thought.

Chuck gives a little sigh into the kiss and takes Raleigh’s face in his hands, trying his best to ignore the tingling in his gums. He doesn’t want to think about anything that would remind him of what he is – not how good Raleigh smells, not the heat that radiates off of him, not the thrum of Raleigh’s pulse or the way his teeth seem to twinge in tune with it. He wants to forget and just have this for what it is. Even as Raleigh’s tongue slides against his fangs – and like always, that sends a jolt of the most bizarre pleasure he’s ever felt shooting through him – Chuck decides that he’s going to pretend. Just a normal human about to have sex for the first time, that’s it.

 

*

 

Though he kind of expects Chuck to put up some sort of resistance, Raleigh manages to guide Chuck into the bed. He lays him down and moves over top of him, breaking the kiss just long enough to push Chuck’s legs apart and slide between them, fitting there like it’s what his body was put on this earth to do. Both of Chuck’s hands go to Raleigh’s hair, long fingers combing through the messy locks – Raleigh’s glad that it’s been a few weeks since he’d last cut it – and Raleigh starts to thrust his hips down, rubbing against Chuck to give them both just enough friction to wake them up. It takes a second, but then Chuck starts pushing back, rolling his hips up to meet Raleigh’s motions, and soon they’re just grinding almost lazily against one another.

Chuck makes a noise in his throat, pulling away from the biting kisses that Raleigh’s giving him, and when Raleigh looks at him, there’s something resembling embarrassment in Chuck’s expression. He quickly replaces the look with one of annoyance, that arrogant mask that he’s so good at maintaining falling into place, and he tugs irritably at the collar of Raleigh’s sweater, arching his eyebrows. “This coming off?”

Raleigh doesn’t say a word. Just sits up a little and hurries out of the sweater, tossing it aside. He starts to lean back down, but Chuck stops him.

“And the undershirt?” he sneers.

Raleigh flashes a quick grin, shrugging out of the white T-shirt he’d been wearing underneath the sweater, and that too gets thrown to the floor. He glances back at Chuck, whose gaze is roving over his bare torso, appraising him. He starts to feel a little self-conscious, because after the Breach had been closed, there’d been no real reason to keep himself in the same shape as before. He and Mako had continued sparring, of course, mostly because sparring with one another had made them feel connected like the Drift had, but he’d gotten a little softer around the edges, not quite as cut and defined. Chuck’s eyes linger on the dull, pinkish scars Raleigh’s carried for what feels like an eternity, the circuitry lines on his left side.

Chuck’s hand slides up from where it’d been settled on Raleigh’s hip, and he lets his fingertips trace one of the scars above his ribs. The light, cool touch sends a shiver down Raleigh’s spine, and Chuck raises his eyes again so that their gazes meet. And then, as though by an unspoken agreement, Raleigh grabs a hold of the T-shirt Chuck’s wearing, and Chuck lifts his arms to let him take it off of him. He’s the same broad mass of strength as before his death, stocky and sturdy, and the skin that had already been fair in life was lighter, almost translucent now. Unlike Raleigh, there’s no scarring whatsoever – his skin is completely unmarred. Whether or not he’d had scars before he’d died and they’d just disappeared when he became _this_ , Raleigh would never know, but his freckles are still visible, dotting his shoulders like a faint constellation, and Raleigh’s a little grateful for that.

He leans back down and kisses Chuck again, slides his hands up Chuck’s chest, and then down to the waistband of his jeans, memorizing the shapes and contours with his fingertips. Chuck’s motionless and unmoving beneath him, which is still a little unnerving, him not needing to breathe and all, but it’s something that Raleigh figures he’s just going to have to get used to. As Chuck starts to kiss him back, like he’s just remembering how to go through the motions, his fingers fumble with Raleigh’s pants, trying to push them down.

“Impatient,” Raleigh murmurs into the kiss, amused.

But Chuck just swallows the word.

Nearly in slow motion, as if it’s happening in a dream, Raleigh gets himself out of his pants – and also the thermal pants he’s taken to wearing underneath because the weather’s gotten so cold – and then he undoes Chuck’s jeans. Chuck’s scowling at him the whole time, but Raleigh’s come to the conclusion that it’s just because he’s embarrassed. Which is kind of funny, because you’d never expect that from a vampire.

When they’re both totally naked, they take one another in – they may have felt around and gotten a hint of what they were working with, but seeing it completely in the flesh like this is different. And as Raleigh’s gaze returns to Chuck’s face, he catches the briefest expression on Chuck’s face, something soft, if not tender. It’s gone in an instant, his features going hard and unreadable again, but it’s too late, Raleigh had already seen it.

And Chuck knows it. “ _What_?” he asks gruffly.

Raleigh smiles a little, then shakes his head. Implies, ‘ _Nothing_.’

Chuck rolls his eyes. “You gonna get down here and fuck me then? I died a virgin once, I don’t need to do it a second time when I expire of bloody boredom.”

Raleigh, still smiling because Chuck can actually be very transparent, and he can’t believe he’s never noticed before, reaches down and takes Chuck’s cock into his hand, giving it an abrupt squeeze. Immediately, Chuck arches up, a surprised noise leaving him, and now Raleigh can’t help but laugh under his breath. Chuck attempts to glare at him, but as Raleigh starts to move his hand, sliding it down Chuck’s full length, Chuck’s eyes flutter closed. He leans and reaches with his other hand for the bedside table – the box that Chuck was never supposed to see – and he digs out a single condom and the small personal lube he’d managed to find in town.

“Don’t, ah, don’t reckon we really need that condom,” Chuck says thickly, starting to writhe at what Raleigh’s doing with his hand. His own hand snakes down and he wraps his fingers around Raleigh, his grasp not quite as sure as Raleigh’s. His strokes are slow and tentative. “Not unless my condition can be spread like that.”

Rather than tell Chuck to shut up – because wow, Raleigh really doesn’t need to start wondering about that, it’ll keep him up all day – Raleigh leans in and covers Chuck’s mouth with his own. Chuck makes a noise in his throat like he’s going to try and keep talking, but Raleigh flicks his tongue over the tips of his fangs and the noise becomes a weak groan, his fingers tightening around Raleigh’s cock. As Raleigh sits back up some, he lets go of Chuck’s cock, eliciting what can only be called a whine from Chuck, and Raleigh grins as he tears into the condom packaging with his teeth.

Then, feeling kind of dumb, he says, “It’s gonna hurt.”

“I think I can manage,” Chuck scoffs.

But as Raleigh rolls the condom on, nudging Chuck’s hand aside to do so, he doesn’t fail to notice the uncertainty brewing beneath the surface in Chuck. He grabs Chuck’s hips and lifts them some, showing him how he wants him propped, and then he opens the bottle of lube. He squeezes some of the clear liquid onto his fingers, and as he starts to spread it around, he takes his other hand to Chuck’s cock again.

Beginning to stroke Chuck once more, he brings his slick fingers to Chuck’s hole, and lifting his gaze to Chuck’s face, he presses a single fingertip against him. Chuck’s lips are parted, his fangs visible, and he’s settled a hand on the wrist of the hand Raleigh’s pumping him with. His eyes, though half-lidded, are boldly locked on Raleigh’s.  They don’t break eye contact as Raleigh starts to push his finger past the tight ring of muscle, even as a low noise wells in Chuck’s throat.

When his entire finger is inside Chuck, Raleigh pauses. “You –?”

“ _I’m fine_ ,” Chuck snaps. Like he’s irritated by Raleigh’s concern. “Get on with it.”

He starts with just the one finger, but then quickly adds a second, pressing as deep as he can – and watching Chuck’s reaction, which is a mix of slight discomfort and curiosity. He stops for just a moment, long enough to add a little more lube, and then he’s working both fingers in and out at a smoother pace, stretching Chuck out. He keeps stroking Chuck’s cock with his other hand, light and easy motions just to keep him in the game, so to speak, and eventually, Chuck’s moving with his hands, following their lead.

Chuck murmurs something that sounds like, “Warm,” and his labored tone is strange because of how calm he sounds, not breathless in the least. But then Chuck says all of a sudden, “Stop, _stop_.”

“Too much?” Raleigh asks.

“Not enough,” Chuck growls. “I need more of you. Not your damn fingers. You.”

Raleigh doesn’t say anything – it’ll just annoy Chuck further if he thinks Raleigh’s arguing with him – and he reaches for the bottle again. He gives his own cock a few loose strokes before coating it generously in the lubricant, and then he moves closer to Chuck. He’s practically glowering up at Raleigh as if it irritates him how long he’s taking, but he doesn’t say anything. He just waits, unexpectedly patient.

Guiding his cock to Chuck’s ass, Raleigh lines himself up and hesitates, before he starts to push forward. The tip presses against Chuck and Chuck makes a slight noise in his throat like he’s surprised, but when Raleigh’s gaze flickers up to his face, there’s a determined set to his jaw, and he gives a curt nod to the unasked question. As Raleigh begins to slide into him, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making any noise himself – because it’s been god knows how long since he’s had sex, and Chuck seems impossibly tight around him.

He pauses, but just briefly, and then he gives Chuck an inch. Chuck’s eyes close, his brow furrowing, and he squirms a little, no doubt trying to get used to the feeling. But then, he abruptly shoves his hips up, forcing himself to take almost all of Raleigh in as deep as he can. Raleigh lets out a short groan that turns into a curse, and his hands snap to Chuck’s waist like he can somehow stop him from moving, like Chuck doesn’t have the ability to overpower him. Chuck’s unexpectedly warm around his dick, and Raleigh gives an involuntary jerk forward because it feels so good.

“Keep going,” Chuck says, though his expression is tight.

Their gazes meet and Chuck’s features soften, like just looking at Raleigh is enough to help relax him, and without a word, Raleigh moves again, starting to pull out. Just as his cock is about to leave Chuck, he thrusts forward again, still slow for Chuck’s sake, but not as hesitant. He drives himself into Chuck completely, then holds himself there for a second, and rinse and repeat – pulls out to the tip, pushes in slow, smooth, and deep. And he keeps his eyes on Chuck’s face, watches his reactions – not just to make sure that he’s okay, but also because he suddenly can’t remember anything that’s ever been so striking to him before. Chuck’s eyes fall closed again, head going back against the pillow, and both of his hands fist in the sheet beneath him. He’s too pale, paper white when a normal human would be flushed and maybe even starting to gleam with perspiration, and he’s too quiet, his chest still and lifeless while someone else’s would have been heaving.

But human or not, he’s Chuck. And that’s enough for Raleigh.

 

*

 

It had hurt, sure.

Chuck likes to think he’d had a high pain tolerance when he was alive, and he’s sure the whole ‘being-a-vampire’ thing has only heightened it. The initial pain of Raleigh entering him was there, of course, but after a few moments, it had just turned into more of a mild irritation. And he knew if he could just get past that maddening sensation, it’d have to feel better. And Raleigh had been taking way too damn long. That’s why he’d thrust upwards – someone had had to speed the process along, yeah?

Being so full of Raleigh is like nothing Chuck has ever felt before – and though it’s a silly thing to focus on, Raleigh feels so insanely hot, his skin is virtually scorching. As Raleigh finally starts to move, Chuck clenches the flannel bed sheet in his fists, tugs on the material to try and keep himself grounded, to not lose himself to the discomfort. There’s also the hint of embarrassment that he’s fighting to ignore – awkwardness and insecurity that he hopes won’t be here every damn time they do this.  Because this won’t be the last time, he vows.

When Raleigh’s weight shifts, Chuck opens his eyes. Raleigh’s hands move from his hips, settling on the mattress on either side of him for leverage, and he leans over Chuck, lowers and brings himself closer. Instinct tells Chuck to bend and part his legs a little more, and as he does so, Raleigh is able to thrust a little deeper into him, and Chuck groans. Raleigh’s eyes are concentrated and unblinking as he stares down at Chuck, and Chuck wants to sneer at him like usual, but there’s something in Raleigh’s gaze that he’s never seen before. Even _he_ can’t miss the emotion in the human’s eyes. He’s taken aback by it in fact, by the raw passion he sees.

So taken aback that when Raleigh asks, his voice thick and breathy, “Okay?” Chuck just blinks and nods, and murmurs a wordless affirmation.

Raleigh’s pace picks up then, and when Chuck is able to get his bearings, he starts trying to match the motions – as Raleigh rolls his hips down with more grace than you’d think would be involved in this, Chuck lifts his own up to meet him. And it actually isn’t all that bad. It helps that he can tell that it feels good to Raleigh – his breathing is short and shaky, eyes fluttering but refusing to close, like he just doesn’t want to look away from Chuck. His heart seems like it’s beating louder than usual, but it sounds like music to Chuck’s ears – like the drumbeat of a song that only they can hear.

Letting go of the sheet, he instead grasps at Raleigh’s forearms, and in the same instant, Raleigh swoops in to kiss him, covering Chuck’s mouth with his own like he’s planning to try and breathe some life into him. It’s a kiss verging on inept, somewhat messy, but Chuck doesn’t mind – because if Raleigh’s uncoordinated, it’s because of Chuck, and there’s some sort of victory in that notion. Chuck shapes his lips against Raleigh’s, his fangs aching, and he gives another abrupt thrust up, taking Raleigh in his entirety in one short movement. Raleigh groans against Chuck’s mouth, unabashed, and then nips at Chuck’s lips like he’s warning him not to do that again.

Raleigh’s hand is on Chuck’s cock again, warm fingers wrapping around him firmly, and Chuck’s hips jerk up, this time on their own accord, with no control from him. And in sync with his long, deep thrusts – which are starting to feel better and better each time – Raleigh starts to pump Chuck like his sole purpose in life is to get him to come.

And _fuck_ , that won’t take long at all, Chuck thinks.

If he’d thought what had happened in the kitchen had felt good, it was nothing compared to this. Raleigh’s fist moves over his dick smoothly, aided by pre-come and the leftover lube that had been on his hand, but his grasp is rough and forceful. And Chuck likes that. On every sharp upstroke he delivers, Raleigh squeezes just a little tighter, and before Chuck realizes it, he’s making embarrassing noise after embarrassing noise low in his throat, pushing up off the mattress even more than he’d been before.

When Raleigh licks at his teeth, Chuck no longer cares what sort of sounds he makes – his groan is loud and drawn-out. Raleigh moans in response, as though encouraged by the noise, and he breathes out Chuck’s name as he breaks the kiss, pulling back to direct his attention to Chuck’s jaw. He trails his lips – which feel searingly hot – along the line of Chuck’s jaw, up to his ear, and Chuck turns his face into Raleigh’s neck, opens his mouth against his skin to take in the scent that’s just so markedly Raleigh.

The taste of Raleigh’s sweat on his lips drives Chuck crazy, makes his gums twinge so hard he slightly winces at the pain. And as Raleigh gives him a particularly hard thrust, a blinding jolt of pleasure races through Chuck, makes him arch against and clutch at Raleigh, his body quivering. He moans before he can stop himself, and then blinks rapidly to try and clear his vision.

Just as he’s about to say something – he doesn’t know what exactly, maybe ask Raleigh what the hell that’d been, maybe tell him to do it again, who knows? – Raleigh takes the initiative to do it again, whatever it was he’d done. And just as he angles himself and presses against that sweet spot in Chuck that makes him see stars again, he squeezes his fingers around Chuck’s dick. The combined sensations make Chuck moan again, the sound muffled in Raleigh’s neck. He can feel his balls drawing up tighter, and a faint clenching in his gut, and he squeezes his eyes shut because he feels like he’s standing on the edge of some metaphorical cliff, and it’s kind of a little overwhelming to him.

He suddenly realizes Raleigh’s saying something to him. Tries to bring himself back to Earth just long enough to comprehend the actual words.

“ _Do it_.”

Chuck’s brain says he has no bloody idea what the idiot on top of him is saying, but instinct takes over. He sinks his ultrasensitive fangs into Raleigh’s neck.

The moment Raleigh’s blood hits his tongue, Chuck’s done for. White hot pleasure courses through him like an electric current, seeming to set him aflame, and he moans, latching onto Raleigh tighter as he starts to come – fingers of one hand digging into Raleigh’s hip, the other coming up to grip Raleigh’s shoulder. He takes a pull on Raleigh’s blood and Raleigh says his name sharply, like it’s a curse word, his mouth hot against Chuck’s ear, and his body goes stiff over top of him. He gives a final jerk of his hips – he makes it count, drives himself fully into Chuck – and then he holds himself there, tense and rigid, as he too comes.

His heart is hammering so loud that it’s almost deafening in Chuck’s ears, and his hand is still moving over Chuck’s cock like he hasn’t already milked him dry. It’s a little too much for Chuck after such a powerful climax, so he snakes a hand between them and nudges Raleigh’s hand away. He also pulls his fangs out of Raleigh, even though there’s red at the corners of his vision and all he wants to do is drink and drink until there’s nothing left.

After Raleigh finishes – Chuck has to assume by the way the tension drains from his body that he’s done – Raleigh trembles just a little bit before he starts to pull out. He lifts his head to look down at Chuck, and his eyes are half-lidded, but intense and raw, just like before. He’s still breathing somewhat hard through his nose, and his hair sticks to his forehead with sweat – Chuck isn’t perspiring himself, of course, much less breathing – and his face is flushed with color. And Christ… he’s stunning. So very human.

They sort of just stare at one another for a moment, and something passes between them. Chuck doesn’t know what it is or what it means, but he does know that it’s there – and he’s pretty sure it’s a good thing. And then Raleigh’s climbing off of him and he inwardly laments the loss of his heat.

He wants to move, feels like he needs to get up, but he’s too lethargic all of a sudden. At first he thinks he’s simply worn out and well-sated, but then he remembers what time it is and realizes that it’s because the sun is on the rise. So as Raleigh cleans up – throws away the condom, gets a towel for Chuck to wipe his stomach with, bandages up his neck – Chuck mostly just lays there and watches him. Raleigh double-checks that the curtains are completely closed before he returns to the bed, and he stretches out beside Chuck like a cat, not in the least bit self-conscious of his body or scars.

Chuck studies him and says, “Does this make you a necrophiliac, then?”

“You’re not dead.”

Chuck snorts. “Feel like we’ve had this conversation before, Ray. I’m dead as a dodo –”

“When I look into your eyes, I don’t see a dead man,” Raleigh says, giving Chuck a very serious look that also makes it seem like he’s scolding him. “Okay?”

And Chuck is properly reprimanded. He nods. “Okay….”

Raleigh sweeps his gaze over him then, shifting to get more comfortable. He moves closer to Chuck, and drapes an arm over his stomach. “Besides, I don’t think dead men can do what you just did.”

And Chuck would probably be blushing if he had the ability.

Raleigh falls asleep almost instantly, and Chuck lazily reaches up to touch his hair, twist a lock of it around his index finger. But then his arm feels like it’s full of lead and he drops it to his side again, letting his eyes fall closed. As it usually does, the sleep that takes him is heavy and potent, like he’s been drugged. Empty, dark nothingness comes easily, within mere seconds. But not before he sees Raleigh’s face in his mind’s eye, sees the way Raleigh had been looking at him moments before.

 

*

_I’m built for pain._

_I swore to let no one in._

_But there you were – a vision of beauty._

_– “Nevada’s Grace,” Atreyu_

*

 

Though he claims to have no real preference, Chuck starts sleeping in Raleigh’s room instead of the attic – which makes sense, Raleigh figures, after how close they’ve become. Raleigh’s always been careful about the curtains that cover all of the windows in the cabin, but he’s extra vigilant now, makes absolutely sure no sunlight will creep into the room and harm Chuck while he’s busy, you know, being dead for the day.

They don’t really discuss what’d happened. Sometimes Raleigh looks at Chuck to try and say something about it, but they just end up staring at each other instead. He figures the words are better left unsaid anyway – whether or not it’s from spending so long together, it’s clear to Raleigh that they both feel the same way about one another. It was clear in that moment just after they’d both come, when they’d looked at one another and time had seemed to slow, and it’s clear now, whenever their gazes meet, even briefly.

Raleigh’s not too keen to apply that certain word to what it is he feels for Chuck. But he will say that it’s a strong feeling, all encompassing.

It’s a snowy day in mid-November when everything changes.

When Raleigh wakes up to the knocking at the front door, he’s wrapped up in the blanket as tight as he can be, and curled up against Chuck’s side – which isn’t as comfortable as he’d like, on account of Chuck feeling so stiff and cool. At first, Raleigh can’t remember what woke him in the first place, and he rolls over onto his back, blinking as his eyes adjust to the shadowed room. When he hears the muffled knocking again – and he only hears it because the bedroom door is half-open – he heaves a sigh and starts to climb out of bed. He rubs his eyes and pauses to read the clock, which says that it’s only one in the afternoon, and he shuffles around the room for a sweater to put on over the singlet he’s wearing; decides that when he comes back to bed he’ll just keep the damn thing on since the house feels so chilly.

He’s just reaching the bottom of the stairs when the person at the door knocks again, and he mumbles something unintelligibly, far too quiet for them to hear, but it makes him feel better. After making sure the marks on his neck are covered up – which is second nature to him, by now – he unlocks and pulls open the door, squinting against the harsh white of the snow outside.

And he promptly feels his stomach drop.

Standing on the porch, bundled up for the weather, with a backdrop of falling snow, is Mako Mori. Her windblown hair is a little longer than he’s ever seen it, dotted with flurries, the blue streaks faded, and her elfin face is flushed from the cold. As the door opens, she straightens her shoulders some, eyes going wide like she’s just as surprised as Raleigh is.

When he remembers how to breathe again, he utters her name and grasps the door for support. He’s suddenly wide awake, his heart racing and his throat dry. “How did you…?”

She watches him, her expression closed off and impossible to read. “You didn’t make it easy for me,” she says slowly.

And he just stares stupidly at her.

After a moment, she asks, “Are you going to invite me in?” and she sounds like she’s trying to control emotions that Raleigh’s too dumb to figure out, like all of his time with Chuck has led to him being virtually incapable of competently interacting with other human beings.

And because he’s still so stunned to see her, all he can do is step aside, wordlessly.

She slides past him, all catlike grace with a presence far larger than her actual stature, and she looks around as she enters the foyer. Raleigh shuts the door and all he can think about is Chuck and the fact that he left the bedroom door open, and god, if Mako sees Chuck….

“Alaska was my first thought,” she says, and as he turns to her, she’s watching him with her hands on her hips. “But I thought Anchorage – not Fairbanks. And not in the middle of nowhere.”

“Why…?” Raleigh trails off at first. Licks his lips and lowers his gaze. “Why did you come here?”

“You thought a note would be sufficient? You thought I wouldn’t worry?”

“Mako –”

“You didn’t say where you were going – barely said anything. For all I knew, something bad had happened. But… you seem fine to me,” she says, lowering her tone in that way that says she’s disappointed in him. And he hates it. But he knows that he deserves it. “If you wanted to live alone, Raleigh, that’s all you had to say.”

“That’s not – that’s not why I came out here,” he says quickly. And she looks skeptical. “I just needed some time to sort things out – like I said in the letter. I was going to come back.” _Eventually_ , he thinks. _Never_ , says a sharp voice in the back of his mind.

She doesn’t respond, whether it’s because she’s too annoyed by his obvious lie, or because she doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know. They sort of just stand there, him shuffling and rubbing at his neck awkwardly, and her as still as stone, watching the floor. He feels a desperate need to glance at the stairs, like it’ll somehow reassure him that Chuck won’t be found, but he’s afraid she’ll know something’s up if he does. So he looks up at the ceiling, looks back at the door, at the top of Mako’s head – everywhere but the stairs. 

Finally, she breaks the silence. “I tried calling.”

“That was you?” They got so few calls at the cabin that there’s no way he could have forgotten the one that was all static.

“It wasn’t easy for me to follow your trail, but I did it,” she says.

“It didn’t take you very long.”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” And there it is, the barest hint of humor in her voice, accompanied by a subtle raise of her eyebrows as she returns her gaze to his face.

He flashes a small, guilty smile, forgetting for the moment how bad it is for her to be there.

“Raleigh,” she says, and it sounds like she’s missed saying his name in all of the months they’ve been apart. And damnit, he’s missed hearing it.

When she abruptly closes the little gap between them, pulling him into a fierce embrace, he’s too surprised at first to react. But she’s warm, breathing, and he’s forgotten what it feels like to be so close to another human. He practically melts against her small frame, tightening his arms around her and pulling her close. He’d realized how much he’d missed her, of course, had spent a lot of time grieving not being near her – she was his best friend, his other half. But seeing her here and now is overpowering.

“Mako,” he says. And it just feels good being able to say it.

When they break away from one another, they’re both smiling now. He knows how angry she is at him for the way he left – he can feel it, almost like being in the Drift with her again – but it seems like her pleasure at seeing him cancels it out for the time being. He reaches up and picks up a lock of her dyed hair, and her fingers curl into his sweater – like they need to touch each other to make sure this is really happening.

But all of a sudden, there’s movement near the stairs, and they both see it.

There’s Chuck, standing at the bottom of the staircase and leaning against the end of the banister – he’s all but draped over it, actually, his body slack and heavy. He looks like he’s struggling to stay up, like he might collapse at any moment. Raleigh starts to lurch toward him to help him stay up, but he stops, his eyes wide and heart feeling like it’s about to tear itself out of his chest with the way it skips a few beats. He’s pretty sure Chuck’s current state is on account of him being up while the sun is still high – he’s been up and about with the sun out before, but it was always just before it rose or set, never in the middle of the day like this. Up until now, Raleigh had actually thought it was impossible for him to even wake up at a time like this.

Mako makes the softest of gasping sounds, and Raleigh spins back to her, having momentarily forgotten she was there. She takes a step back, eyes transfixed on Chuck, her face drained of all color, and her expression is one of mingled shock, fear, and confusion. Raleigh looks between the two of them trying desperately to think of something to say, some way to diffuse this situation before it gets any worse.

“It’s not…. Mako, it’s –” is about all he can uselessly get out.

But he might as well not even be in the room with them. Mako and Chuck stare at one another, and though Chuck needs the banister to remain mostly upright and on his feet, he radiates danger, his very presence is threatening and intimidating – like there’s a dark aura surrounding him. The fangs haven’t even come out yet, remarkably. Raleigh’s never seen him like this before, he’s never seen him look so… frightening. Finally, one of them speaks.

“You are not Chuck,” Mako says, curtly, shaking her head in disbelief.

He gives her the equivalent of a snarl. And on cue, the fangs lengthen into place.

She takes another step back, but her stance isn’t one of a retreat – it’s anticipatory. Her fists clench at her sides, and a hard mask settles over her face, her jaw setting and chin jutting out. She’s ready to fight. And Chuck is too, apparently – he pushes away from the banister and all but stumbles towards her. His eyes are dead and flat, save for the animal fury Raleigh can see burning in them. He’s primal, like Raleigh’s never seen him.

“Mako,” he says, grabbing for her arm.

She pulls it away, never once taking her gaze off of Chuck. This time she moves forward just an inch, like she’s trying to step in front of Raleigh, as though she means to protect him from the phantom standing before her. Raleigh says her name again, but she doesn’t seem to hear him. He knows he needs to do something fast, because Mako may be skillful, but he’s seen what Chuck can do to a person. Can still see it when he closes his eyes.

He barrels around her and steps between them, placing a hand on Chuck’s chest even as Mako grabs him to try and pull him back. Out of instinct, Chuck’s hands go to Raleigh’s arm, fingertips digging into his skin hard enough to bruise, but then his gaze lifts and meets Raleigh’s, and he hesitates. He blinks a few times and it’s like he’s waking up from whatever trance he’d been in – the hard, angry features melt into an expression of perplexity. He looks down at his hands, still gripping Raleigh’s forearm like he plans to tear it from the socket, and then he looks back at Raleigh’s face.

“You need to go back upstairs,” Raleigh says, firmly to try and get through to him. And it seems like such a silly thing to say that he could laugh, even with the cold sweat he’s broken out into.

Chuck’s arms fall away, and he sways a little on his feet. And that’s when Raleigh notices the red slowly seeping out of Chuck’s ears, staining the sides of his neck – being awake this early in the day is actually _harming_ Chuck’s body. Quickly, he grabs one of Chuck’s arms and starts to pull him towards the stairs.

“Raleigh?” Mako’s voice is uncertain from behind him.

He tosses her a contrite, ashamed look, but words fail him. What exactly can he say? _Hold on, let me just put the vampire down to sleep_?

He gets Chuck back to the bedroom surprisingly quickly, given that Chuck’s relying on him for support the whole way there. Chuck says nothing as they go, even as Raleigh gets him deposited on the bed, grunting with the effort of picking up Chuck’s legs, which feel like they’ve been filled with sand. And when Raleigh straightens, looking down at him, Chuck’s eyes are closed and he’s limp and lifeless once more – gone.

With one of his sleeves, he cleans the blood from Chuck’s neck and ears, and he wishes he had a way of knowing whether or not this was going to leave some kind of lasting effect. Why had Chuck gotten up? How? He double-checks the curtains on the window before he leaves the room – and this time, he makes sure to shut the door. Mako’s waiting for him in the hallway, bouncing on the balls of her feet and still looking very much ready for a fight. She stares at Raleigh, eyes wide.

“I, ah… I guess we need to talk,” he says, rubbing at his neck.

And it’s only then that he notices that she’s shaking.

 

*

 

Naturally, he starts at the beginning. He tells her about how Chuck had randomly appeared outside their apartment in Kowloon Bay, wearing the remnants of a tattered Drivesuit, and he tells her about his need for blood. He doesn’t use the V word – it feels silly saying it aloud – and he makes sure to tell her every little thing he knows about Chuck’s brand new body; like the heightened senses, his healing ability, what the sun does to him. And she listens in complete silence, watches him with solemn eyes, nodding to encourage him to continue when he falls silent because he knows how dumb it all sounds.

And when he’s done, she turns to look straight ahead.

They’re sitting in his truck in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven – the same 7-Eleven he’d been parked at the day Chuck had killed that burglar – and they’ve each got a cup of coffee. She warms her hands with hers, and his sits forgotten in the cupholder, his own hands tucked into his armpits with his crossed arms. They sit in the stillness for a long, long time – hours, it feels like. When Mako leans towards him, it’s so sharp and sudden that he flinches.

She simply pushes aside his coat and sweater, exposing his neck. Exposing the bite marks and old scars. She stares at them for a second, as though willing them to heal with her eyes, and then she sits back, frowning so hard that lines appear on her forehead. She doesn’t have to say anything, he knows what she’s thinking.

“It’s the easiest thing to do,” Raleigh says dismissively. He quickly makes sure the marks are covered up again, and he doesn’t dare tell her that he enjoys being bitten. He knows how that would sound, knows that it’s something he should be ashamed of.

“Easy for who?” she asks.

“Better me than someone else,” he says. And that part is definitely true.

“Has he… hurt people?” she asks next.

He hesitates. Swallows and nods, staring hard at his legs.

“Has he killed people?”

He nods again.

“ _Raleigh_.”

“I know.”

They’re silent again. Mako stares at him, her eyes boring into him, and he just keeps his head hanging, his own gaze fixed on his lap. He hasn’t at all forgotten what Chuck’s done – hasn’t forgotten that the people he’s killed were innocent, even the burglar.  But it’s just been easier to not think about them. It’s been easier to pretend it’d never happened.

“How many?” Mako asks.

“Three…. Two here and one back in China,” Raleigh answers, and she curses in Japanese. “The two here – one was this man that broke into our house to rob us. The other was a hiker or a camper or something – she wanted to use the phone.”

“And the first one? In China?”

“You remember that homeless guy that sat outside our building? The one who liked to sleep in the stairwell when it rained?” Raleigh asks. But he knows Mako does – he doesn’t need her to answer. “That first night, I gave Chuck some of my blood. But he’d just woken up for the first time, I guess and… it wasn’t enough. And it was raining, so the guy was under the stairs….”

He darts a quick look at Mako in time to see her blinking a few times, like she’s trying to clear an image from her mind. She turns to look back out the windshield. “And you cleaned up after him?” she asks.

“What else am I supposed to do?” he asks. She shoots him an incredulous look, and he quickly says, “I’m not proud of it, Mako, but he can’t help it. You were closer to Chuck than I was before, you should know that he’d never want to kill anyone on purpose. He couldn’t control himself – but he’s getting better.”

“How do you even know he’s still Chuck?” she asks.

“He is,” Raleigh says. “He remembers his life before, he’s the same person.”

“Or perhaps it’s an entity that just has access to his human memories,” she says.

And well, Raleigh had never even considered that.

He frowns and looks away once more. Mako shifts in the passenger seat, sips delicately at her coffee, and he can feel her watching him again. When she speaks, he can tell by her tone that she’s going to apologize. “I’m –”

“No. It’s something I should have questioned at the beginning.”

And though it makes his throat feel like it’s constricting when he thinks about it, there _is_ a good chance that Chuck Hansen really is no more, that there’s something else, something inhuman, using his empty body for its own purposes. If that’s the case, whatever it is seems to really want to believe that it _is_ Chuck, Raleigh thinks.

But then he remembers the night he and Chuck had slept together, all of the life he’d seen in Chuck’s eyes. It’d been the same energy he’d seen in Chuck’s eyes before his death, that same fire and power that he’d glared at Raleigh with during their confrontation. He shakes his head a little – it’s really Chuck. It has to be.

“I believe him. I believe he’s really Chuck,” he says simply.

And when he looks at Mako again, he almost expects her to look disappointed in him, to look like she thinks he’s a complete idiot for trusting that it’s Chuck so blindly. And maybe he even hopes that she does, maybe he’d appreciate it because at least one of them is being the logical of the two. But she doesn’t. While there’s an underlying hardness to her features – she’s angry at him for, well, _everything_ , as she should be – there’s also something akin to sympathy in her expression.

She nods. “Okay,” is all she says, like she’s telling him that she trusts his opinion.

And he lets out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He slumps in the seat slightly, putting his hands on the steering wheel and clenching tight. It feels… good to talk about this with someone. The weight of the whole situation had been steadily crushing him with every passing day, he’d been well aware, but he’d never thought about how much it might help to actually talk about it with someone.

The weight’s still there, but it’s been eased a little. Like somehow, just Mako knowing about it has lessened the burden. But when he thinks about it more, it somehow makes things both better and worse at the same time. Because she also knows about the murders now, about the lengths Raleigh has gone to to clean up after Chuck’s messes.

And that’s… well, you don’t come back from that sort of thing.

His eyes start to prickle and burn, and he quickly covers them with one of his hands, masking it like a headache and instinctively turning away from Mako. He feels the bench-style seat shift as she moves, and then she’s pressed against him, cheek resting against his shoulder. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to.

They sit there until the sun goes down, and then they sit there even longer. 

 

*

 

When Chuck comes to, it takes him a little while to remember what’d happened. It comes to him slowly in small doses, first he remembers pain – feeling like his blood was spoiling and going rotten inside of him – and then he remembers Mako. Not the sight of her, but the smell of her. And the fear in her voice, the way she’d stepped in front of Raleigh – _his_ Raleigh. He remembers the rage he’d felt in that moment, the desire to hurt her. And it fills him with remorse and shame.

The rest of it is a blur, although it’s obvious that Raleigh had somehow returned him to the bedroom.

The house is empty now, deathly still and silent. He doesn’t know how to feel about that. A part of him is almost scared that Raleigh won’t be coming back, that Raleigh will see Mako’s arrival as his ticket out of here, away from the monster that Chuck had become. He doesn’t believe Raleigh would just up and leave him, especially after what they’d shared, but that was before Mako Mori had reentered the picture. How did she even find him?

After a shower to get rid of the smeared blood that had come out of his ears, which is something he never wanted to experience again, and the blood that had started to trickle out of him from his hairline,  Chuck retreats to the attic.

He hasn’t been in the attic for a little while, not since he’d started sleeping in Raleigh’s bed, but the small, dark space is exactly what he needs at the moment – he settles into it comfortably, lets it wrap around and envelope him. The wind seems louder up there, and it’s the coldest part of the house at the moment, especially with the snowfall outside. But it’s where he belongs.

When he hears Raleigh’s truck pull up, he’s not as surprised as he thought he’d be. And like a pet, he’s tempted to run downstairs and greet him, but he doesn’t. He hears both the driver’s side door and the passenger door open and shut, and then he hears two sets of feet on the porch, kicking off snow.

Then Raleigh’s muffled voice: “You’re not…?”

“Do you really think I’m going to leave you now?” Mako’s muted retort.

And Chuck cringes.

They come inside and he hears them moving around in the kitchen – shuffling, taking off coats – and they don’t speak much more. A few minutes later, he hears Raleigh making his way up the main stairs, going to his bedroom – no doubt, looking for Chuck – and then wandering back into the hallway. Chuck had pulled the attic ladder up with him, and for a moment, he childishly wishes there was a way to lock it from his side.

As Raleigh pulls the ladder down, Chuck has another stupid thought and pretends to be asleep, even though it’s well past sunset and he knows Raleigh will know he’s conscious. Raleigh climbs up and joins him, much to Chuck’s aggravation; he slinks into the cramped space beside him like that day the detective from Anchorage came by – a day that feels like a hundred years ago – and he curls up beside him. His warmth washes over Chuck and covers him like a blanket, and Chuck wants to move closer, wants it almost desperately, and he can’t help but to lift his arm and make more room for Raleigh at his side. He doesn’t even care that he’s giving away that he’s not sleeping.

“Mako’s going to stay with us for a little while,” Raleigh says after a beat.

“Of course she is.”

“She can help us, Chuck.” And the way he says it, kind of forceful and altogether serious, makes Chuck fall silent. Raleigh shakes his head a little. “I told her everything.”

“Everything? The people I –”

“Yeah.”

Chuck hesitates. “Us?”

“I told her _almost_ everything.”

And Chuck can’t really say why that’s such a relief to him. It’s not that he’s ashamed of what he and Raleigh did, or how close he and Raleigh are – it’s just that… Mako doesn’t need to know. It’s none of her bloody business. “She doesn’t believe it’s me…. What she said earlier, that I wasn’t me….” He trails off. He hadn’t meant to actually say anything about one of the only things he remembered from earlier – had planned on letting it go, because it seemed like such a silly thing to be upset about.

“Does it matter what she thinks?”

Chuck reckons not, but he doesn’t say anything.

“What was that anyway?” is Raleigh’s next question, and he shifts, propping himself up on his elbow and looking down through the darkness at Chuck, even though Chuck knows he can’t actually see him. “I’ve never seen you wake up in the middle of the day before – I didn’t think you could.”

“I didn’t know I could,” Chuck admits. He opens his mouth to tell Raleigh what had woken him, but then bites the words back. “I just woke up, I don’t know.”

“Tell me.”

Chuck pushes out a sigh through his nose. Can see the small quirk that comes to Raleigh’s mouth. “Your heartbeat woke me up. It seemed so loud and I thought – I thought you needed help.”

“You thought I was in danger?” Raleigh asks.

“That’s not what I said,” Chuck grumbles.

“You were coming to rescue me?” And now the bastard’s actually _grinning_.

And yeah, maybe that’s what it’d been. Chuck remembers being stirred by the sudden and rapid beating of Raleigh’s heart as it raced a mile a minute, and he remembers fearing the worst. But he doesn’t need to tell Raleigh all of this.

“Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?” he asks.

Raleigh’s grin fades as quickly as it’d come, and he pauses in thought. He says, “Change isn’t always a bad thing.”

And Chuck doesn’t know if he agrees or not.

After a long moment of silence, Raleigh moves again, starts to slide towards the ladder. “If I stay up here any longer I’m going to freeze to death,” he says. And when he reaches the trap door, he stops, looking towards Chuck with raised eyebrows.

“I think I’m going to hang about up here for a little while,” Chuck says to the unasked question.

He makes sure to close his eyes so as not to see the disappointment that crosses Raleigh’s face. For a good minute or so, Raleigh stares at him, though he doesn’t speak. It’s not until Chuck can hear him climbing down the ladder, reaching the landing of the second floor, that he finally opens his eyes again.

The attic feels colder than it’s ever felt before. Chuck curses at himself.

 

*

_I’m scared to death of what’s to become_

_Of my immortal soul, of this eternal flame,_

_Will you remember?_

_– “The Remembrance Ballad,” Atreyu_

*

 

To say that things are tense having  Mako at the cabin would be an extreme understatement. She doesn’t really seem to want Raleigh being alone with Chuck, and Chuck seems to think she’s going to steal Raleigh away from him any given second. Raleigh starts to feel like he’s being split right up the middle by two people who’d rather trust a Kaiju than one another.

Mako eventually tries, at least. She’s clearly afraid of Chuck and what he’s become, but she makes attempts to include and talk to him. Chuck, on the other hand, stays as far away from her as he can. Even after a few days pass – Mako sleeps on the couch, since the cabin’s too small to have a second bedroom – Chuck doesn’t seem any warmer towards her. But he hasn’t bared his fangs at her since she arrived, and Raleigh likes to think that’s a good sign.

He can’t stop replaying what’d happened on that day, mostly because things could have gone very, _very_ wrong, had Chuck not been able to reel in his vampire nature – which Raleigh thinks had something to do with him, as though the sight of him had anchored Chuck. But also because Raleigh can’t believe that the whole reason Chuck was even able to wake up in the middle of the day was because he’d thought Raleigh was in trouble. It’s just something that says a whole lot more about how Chuck feels for him than any words Chuck has actually said. And Raleigh kind of… likes that.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table one evening, going through bills and making sure he has enough money to get more blood for Chuck, when Mako pulls one of the other chairs close and sits down beside him. She sets a notepad and pen on the table, and he glances at it briefly, before looking next at her and raising his eyebrows. She looks resolute, like she’s ready to lay down some cold hard truth on him, and he turns in his chair towards her, giving her his undivided attention.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says slowly. Then she reaches for the notepad, flipping open to the first empty page, and she scribbles something quickly in a tiny scrawl. She slides it towards him and he realizes this is her way of keeping their conversation private, since Chuck could hear even the tiniest whisper.

A little amused, he looks down at the notepad.

_Herc needs to know_.

Raleigh heaves a little sigh. He’d considered Chuck’s father briefly towards the beginning, had contemplated getting in touch with him. But how do you tell someone that they’re only child, who they previously thought was dead, is actually a bloodthirsty monster who’d murdered three people, and could murder tons more if he wanted to?

He looks back at Mako and shakes his head. She taps the end of the pen against what she’d already written, widening her eyes pointedly. He doesn’t say anything – he doesn’t know what _to_ say; doesn’t want to voice his thoughts because he knows he’s in the wrong. He agrees with her for the most part – Herc needs to know. He just doesn’t want to be the one to have to tell him. He doesn’t want to be the one to break the news. And what if Herc doesn’t even believe him? Admittedly, it’s all a load of selfish reasoning – more simply, he’s scared.

She takes the notepad back and scribbles something else, something longer. Just before she passes it to him again, she gives him an apologetic look.

_If this had happened to Yancy and someone was taking care of him, wouldn’t you want to know?_

And that smarts. A lot.  Because the answer, of course, is yes. Most definitely.

So he nods. “Yeah.”

She gives a small, pleased smile, but it doesn’t meet her eyes. Her smiles haven’t met her eyes since she’d first seen Chuck. She leans over to write something else.

_So how long?_

He furrows his eyebrows in question, and she rolls her eyes, leaning over again.

_You and him?_

He shakes his head and opens his mouth to deny that there’s anything between he and Chuck, but she cuts him off.

“How stupid do you think I am?” she teases.

They sort of just stare at one another for a moment, and then, Raleigh laughs. It’s sort of hoarse, like his body doesn’t know how to handle it. But it feels good, so he keeps doing it. Mako joins in, and when she leans in this time, she presses her forehead to his shoulder.

It hits him how much he needs her. He hadn’t realized the extent of it before, but he does now.

Even with the whole having-to-tell-Herc thing looming over him like a storm cloud, and even with Chuck’s obvious disapproval at having her there, Raleigh feels a little optimistic about the future now. The weight on his shoulders seems just a tiny bit lighter.

 

*

 

The silence in the living room irritates Chuck beyond words. He’s sitting in the armchair, glaring at the staticky television, and Mako’s sitting on the couch – on the middle cushion, legs pulled up under her, looking as graceful and poised as one can while wearing a sweater that would drown even Raleigh, two pairs of sweatpants, and thick wool socks. The most irritating thing about Mako being there is not Mako herself, but the uncontrollable spite he feels towards her. He has no real reason to be angry with her and he knows this, but it doesn’t stop him. After the first few days, days in which she’d seemed to think he was seconds away from snapping and killing both her and Raleigh, she’d started making an effort to be nicer and more conversational with him.

And he knows he should appreciate it, he really does. But something in him – pride, insecurity, plain old stubbornness – keeps him grumpy and resentful of her. The only reason he’s still sitting in the living room with her is because he was there first.

He’s so caught up in his petty thoughts that he almost doesn’t notice Raleigh’s appearance – when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye, he spins to the doorway, where Raleigh’s standing, thumbs hooked into the waistband of his pants because he never knows what to do with them. His gaze lands on Chuck, eyes clouded with anxiety, and then Raleigh looks at Mako. And childishly, Chuck resents her a little more.

Raleigh and Mako seem to have an entire conversation with their eyes. At the end of it, he looks blank, composed and unreadable, and she looks somewhat firm, in the moment, reminiscent of a parent who’s asked their child to do something. She stands up, grabbing the large mug she’d had cooling on the coffee table, and with a little look at Chuck – a small smile, one he knows he should return but can’t quite get his face to work right – she glides past Raleigh and towards the kitchen.

Raleigh’s gaze returns to Chuck, and a very small part of Chuck wants to slide down in the chair some. He doesn’t like the look on Raleigh’s face, has a bad feeling about whatever he and Mako were apparently in agreement over. But out of habit, he juts his jaw out and narrows his eyes. Raleigh moves further into the room, makes a beeline for the couch, and he sits down exactly where Mako had been – which is something that shouldn’t be maddening but it is.

“ _What_?” Chuck snaps.

“I’ve been thinking,” Raleigh begins.

“Or has Mako been thinking for you?” Chuck asks.

Raleigh gives him a look – and he suddenly looks so worn down and burnt up that Chuck immediately feels guilty for being a shit. He blinks a few times and looks back at the TV, properly ashamed, and he hears Raleigh take a deep breath and shift on the couch, perching on the edge of the cushion with his arms resting on his knees. When he speaks, his voice is so soft that someone else might miss it – someone who doesn’t have enhanced hearing like Chuck, of course.

“We need to get in touch with your father.”

And Chuck feels like he’s just been slapped across the face. A choked noise of surprise tears itself out of his throat and he grips the arms of the chair so hard he hears his fingers tearing into the fabric and the wood beneath it. He turns and gapes at Raleigh, eyes bulging, and Raleigh just looks back at him, calm and collected and waiting for an answer. And that pisses Chuck off – he grits his teeth and clenches the chair harder, nostrils flaring.

“What the hell for? _Why_?” he manages to ask, speaking through his teeth.

“Because he needs to know, Chuck,” Raleigh says simply.

And Chuck shakes his head before turning away and throwing himself out of the chair. Raleigh tenses, sitting up a little straighter, but he’s silent as Chuck starts pacing. The truth of it is that he’s fought to keep himself from thinking about the old man, he’s fought _so hard_ to keep his mind on the present, and to keep it from straying to things that can hurt him. It’s easier this way – all that matters to him is Raleigh, and as long as he and Raleigh were out here in bloody Alaska where no one could reach them, Chuck had been fine.

But then Mako had to come and bring all of this with her, reminders of the real world and what exists outside of the cabin Chuck spends every hour of the day in.

He feels an echo of pain in his chest, a ghost of the sort of ache he knows he’d feel as a human. And he suddenly wishes he _was_ human so he could take a few deep breaths to steady himself – he just wants to _breathe_ , damnit.

Raleigh says his name, rising to his feet in a smooth motion. “You know it’s the right thing,” he says. “He _needs_ to see you, he needs to know you’re still –”

“But I’m not, am I? I’m not alive,” Chuck says sharply. “I’m not sure what I am anymore. Does he really need to know that I drink blood? That I’ve killed people?”

“Yes.” The answer’s so simple, said with such lucidity, that Chuck is almost taken aback by it. Raleigh sighs, nearing him, and though Chuck wants to step away because this just feels like too much, he can’t. He’s rooted to the spot. “Think about it – if it was the other way around, if you thought your father was dead, wouldn’t you want to know if he was really still out there somewhere? Wouldn’t you want to know that you had a chance to say all the things you wish you’d said before?”

And now Chuck understands why Raleigh’s so dead-set on this happening. Yancy. Just thinking the older Becket’s name makes him feel weirdly guilty, but it hammers it home, makes Chuck realize that, as always, stupid Raleigh is right.

The last time Chuck saw his father, he’d had so much that he’d wanted to say. Stuff he couldn’t even address in the Drift, stuff that was too hard to face, too locked up tight in his mind behind walls of steel and ice. And his father had never tried to force those words out of him. Even when they’d argued – when weren’t they arguing? Chuck thinks – neither of them had ever actually said what they truly meant, just slung bitterness back and forth until one or the other gave up and walked away.

And then it’d been too late – Chuck was dead.

“I don’t….” Chuck trails off, barely realizes he’d tried speaking at all until he looks at Raleigh, who’s eyebrows are up in expectation. Chuck blinks and shakes his head. He’s never going to admit that he’s scared – completely terrified. And by the way Raleigh’s eyes seem to soften, it looks like he doesn’t need to admit it.

“Can I get in touch with him?” Raleigh asks.

“You’re honestly letting me decide?” Chuck asks skeptically.

Raleigh’s eyes never leave his, and he nods once. “I think it needs to be done, but… I’ll do whatever you want to do.”

And it’s a simple thing to say, really, but there’s a deeper meaning to his words, one that Chuck doesn’t think Raleigh even realizes is there himself. That one basic statement sums up their entire relationship – it’s been Raleigh’s way of handling things since day one. He was always accommodating Chuck, always making room for what _he_ wanted and cleaning up after _his_ messes.

Chuck blinks again, decided. “Okay.”

Raleigh seems surprised. “Yeah?”

Before he can change his mind, Chuck quickly nods. “Yeah. Let’s just… get it over with.”

Raleigh reaches over and places a hand against the side of Chuck’s neck, studying him with those intense eyes of him – eyes that are always full of such force, that pierce right through Chuck without Raleigh even seeming to realize it. That special something passes between them again and they don’t need to speak – it’s like they’re of one mind, like they’re Drifting.

Chuck isn’t too keen on all of this change and how quickly it’s happening, but if Raleigh thinks it’s best, then he won’t fight it. And if Raleigh thinks bringing Herc Hansen into the mix will be good for them, then Chuck’s willing to believe it.

 

*

_And I don’t even trust myself, but I love you._

_– “Demonology and Heartache,” Atreyu_

*

 

“You’re doing _what_?”

Chuck hesitates just inside the door of Raleigh’s room, his hand on the doorknob, and he turns his head a little to listen. Mako’s voice had been hushed but he can hear her and Raleigh at the foot of the stairs, their hearts seeming to beat in perfect bloody harmony. The sun’s only just set, and Chuck would bet money if he had any that the two of them think he’s still asleep. Most of the time they keep their conversations as private as they can – he’s seen them using the notepad.

“Phone reception’s better in town,” comes Raleigh’s soft voice.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Mako asks.

There’s a pause, and Raleigh’s probably making that contemplative face of his, where he pushes his lips out and looks down at his feet. Then he says, “He won’t believe just my word – this is the only way.”

“Okay,” Mako says after a beat. “When are we going?”

“Actually, can you stay here?”

“ _Raleigh_.” She sounds incredulous.

“Please?”

Chuck hears her sigh, very obviously unhappy with whatever Raleigh’s asking of her. But then she says again, “Okay.”

“I can handle him,” Raleigh says.

And Chuck realizes that they’re talking about _him_. He hears Raleigh start up the stairs, and Chuck straightens, puffs out his chest some, and throws the door open to step out into the hall and find out just what the hell is going on. Raleigh slows to a stop when he sees him, a small smile coming to his face, though his eyes remain tense and clouded.

Chuck opens his mouth to get to the bottom of it all, but Raleigh beats him to the punch.

“You’re coming into town with me.”

“What? Why?” Chuck demands, eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

Raleigh digs around in one of his pants pockets and pulls out a scrap of paper – holds it up just long enough for Chuck to see a string of numbers on it. “Your father’s number,” Raleigh explains. “This phone doesn’t do too well long distance, like when Mako tried to call – we have to use one in town.”

Chuck swears his throat goes dry. He feels like a complete idiot for not realizing sooner what he and Mako had been going on about – of course it had to do with Herc. “Why do I have to go?” he asks, and even to his own ears, he sounds like he’s a whining child.

“You’re gonna have to talk to him. You really think he’d take my word on it if I tried to tell him that you’re alive?”

“I’m not al –”

“For all intents and purposes,” Raleigh says firmly. He moves towards Chuck and adds, “It needs to be done, alright?”

Chuck grumps – that’s the only thing he can think to call the frustrated noise that leaves him – and he shuffles backwards, away from Raleigh. He may be acting like a petty child, but that doesn’t mean he needs to be talked to like one. When Raleigh doesn’t say anything else, when he seems to be waiting for Chuck to answer, Chuck glares.

“Alright, fine, whatever,” he says.

“We’ll run into a fair share of people in town….”

“I think I can handle it,” Chuck snaps. “I’m not just going to start killing any and every person I see, Ray.”

Raleigh rolls his eyes and Chuck ducks his head a little because he’s not an idiot – he knows that’s not what Raleigh had meant. But then Raleigh’s turning to go back down the hall, and he says over his shoulder, “Come down when you’re ready, I guess.”

“Raleigh,” Chuck says quickly. The human stops and turns slightly to look at him, and Chuck hates how uncertain he sounds as he says, “I think maybe I should, ah, feed, before we leave. Lessen the chance of me… losing control.”

And Raleigh’s expression loses some of the ice Chuck’s attitude had put into it, though he doesn’t say anything. He returns to Chuck, shoving up one of his sleeves, and he offers his right wrist. Ever since Mako had arrived, Chuck doesn’t feed from Raleigh as often as he’d grown used to doing, and he knows it’s because Raleigh feels a deep sense of shame over the fact that he enjoys it when Chuck bites him. He’s disappointed, but he’s certainly not going to complain.

He grabs Raleigh’s arm and pulls him closer, and that’s when he notes the scarring on the inside of his wrist – the marks from when Chuck had fed from him that very first time in Kowloon Bay. He’d never noticed before, mostly because Raleigh seemed to want to hide them all the time. The sight makes Chuck cringe. The bite marks that pepper both sides of Raleigh’s neck are small punctures; clean, easy wounds. But this one deep scar on Raleigh’s wrist is jagged and nasty-looking, like he was attacked by a wild animal and had had to literally pry its teeth out of his skin. It looks like the only thing that had kept Raleigh from needing stitches was pure luck.

And Chuck can barely even remember doing it to him.

He slides his thumb over it, feels the thump of Raleigh’s pulse beneath his warm flesh, and then he looks up at Raleigh, who’s gazing down at the scar as well, expression blank – like he has not one thought on the matter. His eyes lift and meet Chuck’s, and his eyebrows go together just a fraction in question.

“And you still took me in?” Chuck asks, not realizing he’s speaking the words until they’re already out of him. 

Raleigh lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. “What else was I going to do?” he asks.

Chuck looks back down at the scar, feeling a rush of all these different emotions that he can’t at all explain. First, of course, is the complete and utter devotion he feels towards Raleigh – an emotion he refuses to acknowledge, even though it makes his chest feel tight and his mind feel dizzy and light – followed by the guilt and the sureness that he’s so undeserving and unworthy of such compassion. And then, stronger than anything else, leaving a strong, bitter tang in Chuck’s throat and on the back of his tongue, is anger. Raleigh is an idiot. A stupid, bleeding heart do-gooder who just _had_ to take it on himself to care for a monster like him.

“I could have killed you,” Chuck says, tone low, glowering at Raleigh.

“And, as I’m sure you’re well aware of now – I can handle myself.” The response is sarcastic and dry as Raleigh rolls his eyes.

But Chuck suddenly doesn’t want to bite Raleigh. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s been so harshly reminded of just what he is and how dangerous he is, or if he’s irritated with Raleigh’s remark. So he just sort of holds onto Raleigh’s arm, thumb still pressed against the scar like he can will it away, like he can use his supernatural abilities to heal it for him.

Raleigh takes a deep breath, and then his other hand is against the back of his head. Chuck tenses, Raleigh’s touch sending a thrill down his spine, and his eyes flutter as Raleigh combs his fingers through his hair. Raleigh leans in, pressing his lips to Chuck’s temple, and the unexpected show of affection makes Chuck’s annoyance completely dissipate, to be replaced with a warm sensation that moves through Chuck like whiskey. He pretends that’s not the case though, pretends the kiss just adds to his ire, and makes an exasperated little noise in his throat.

Bringing his hand down to cup the back of Chuck’s neck, Raleigh keeps his mouth against Chuck’s temple as he speaks. “You have to start trusting me like I trust you,” he says.

“I do,” Chuck says quickly, more enthusiastically than he means to.

Raleigh sort of wiggles his arm a little, as though to remind Chuck that it’s there, and he says, “Then you need to hurry up so we can go into town and call your father.”

And while Chuck would like to argue – Christ, does he want to argue – he knows that it would just be him stalling. So he directs his attention back to Raleigh’s wrist, focuses instead on the steady thrum of Raleigh’s pulse, how hot his skin feels, the smell of him. His gums tingle before his fangs slide into place. Raleigh pulls away a little, but he keeps his hand lightly on the back of Chuck’s neck, fingers playing at Chuck’s hairline, and as Chuck raises Raleigh’s wrist to his mouth, Raleigh looks away.

Chuck bites where the scar is. As if he thinks he can hide it behind a new one. He lets his eyes fall closed as his fangs pierce Raleigh, hears the quick intake of breath from him, and he takes only a few short pulls – this isn’t a meal, just a precaution. As he starts to pull back, he takes a final lap at the punctures, then presses his lips against them in a kiss, like it’s his own silent way of apologizing for what he’s done to Raleigh’s body over the course of only a few months.

Raleigh gives his neck a light squeeze and then he moves away from Chuck, going straight for the bathroom, gripping his wrist with his other hand to stop the bleeding. Chuck just stands there for a moment, letting himself enjoy what Raleigh’s blood does to him – refreshes him, warms him up, makes him feel like he can do anything – and he swipes his tongue over his teeth to get every trace of it. Like he usually does, he gets caught up in all the sensations it brings. And he doesn’t notice Mako until he turns to go downstairs.

She’s standing at the top of the stairs, wringing her hands and watching him with a completely passive and unreadable look on her face. He nearly flinches at the sight of her, hand jerking up to wipe his mouth and hide his fangs, which he still has trouble putting away on his own. He’s already well aware of how Mako feels about him and what he is – he doesn’t need to give her any more ammunition for her uneasiness towards him. She drops her hands to her sides, shoulders lifting some, and she looks like she’s trying desperately to think of something to say to him.

He traipses past her with a bark of, “Excuse me.”

“Chuck?” Her tone is uncertain, but unwavering at the same time.

He hesitates. Then he slowly turns to look at her.

Her eyes soften a little as they watch one another, and then she taps at her jaw, vaguely reminding Chuck of how his grandmother would prompt for a kiss when he was a small child. But he knows what Mako’s gesture means. He quickly rubs the back of his hand across his jaw, and sure enough, there’d been a bit of blood smeared there from his first attempt at wiping it away. He looks back at Mako, who bows her head in a small nod.

Then she says, “Good luck,” softly and… genuinely.

He blinks uselessly, not quite knowing how to respond, and as her mouth twitches very slightly in a smile – forced, but one of something that can only be called understanding – he returns the nod she’d given him. And then, embarrassed and ashamed, and thankful he can’t blush, he marches down the the stairs to wait for Raleigh.

 

*

 

“Are you alright?”

“I will be once you stop asking me that bloody question.”

“Maybe I’ll stop asking when you stop fidgeting.”

Regardless of the fact that his stomach is twisted up in knots and he can barely think straight, Raleigh can’t help but grin a little as Chuck turns in the passenger seat of the truck to glare at him. He’s wearing a large down jacket and a faux fur-lined cap with earflaps, and he strikes quite a comical image already, but add to it the sour look of a person who’s being cranky just for cranky’s sake, and it’s hard not to at least smile about it.

“I’m fidgeting because you’re making me wear all this shit,” Chuck complains. He shakes his head and grabs at the hat, tearing it off and throwing it on the dashboard. “Why don’t you wear that one?”

“I like mine,” Raleigh says, turning his gaze back on the road as he drives. His own hat’s the simple knitted one he’s favored since they moved there – though now his hair is getting longer and pokes out more than it used to. “You have to wear ‘all this shit’ because while I know you’re not affected by the cold like most people, you have to keep up appearances.”

“But earflaps? Really?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s the only other hat I had.” And that’s actually a lie, though if Chuck can tell, he doesn’t say anything. Raleigh _had_ given him that hat specifically because of the earflaps, because he’d known that said flaps would hide more of Chuck’s face than another hat would – anyone who kept up with the Kaiju war knows that Charles Hansen died in action, and the last thing they need is someone recognizing him.

Chuck grumbles something that Raleigh doesn’t quite catch and he turns to sulk out the window. He fidgets with the thick coat again, then tugs at his seatbelt – he hadn’t wanted to wear it, had said it was pointless because if Raleigh crashed the truck, he’d heal from whatever injuries he got, and Raleigh had argued that his healing abilities wouldn’t work on a shattered windshield. So Chuck had obliged and put it on, though he certainly isn’t happy about it, and he nearly says as much with the tiny glare he shoots Raleigh’s way as he pulls on it again. Raleigh reaches over and places a hand on Chuck’s leg, just above the knee, but he keeps his attention focused on the road, even as Chuck turns to him again, quizzical.  

And Chuck doesn’t fidget quite as much the rest of the way into town.

It’s been snowing off and on the whole day, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t out and about – you can get used to any sort of weather when you live in one place long enough. And it helps that it’s a Friday night, because no one wants to stay cooped up inside on the weekend, snow or not. Raleigh pulls into the small lot of a diner in the center of town, parking between two other trucks, and as he turns the ignition off, he looks at Chuck. Chuck seems even more still than usual and his face is hard with tension and disquiet, expression stony. Raleigh starts to feel guilty, but reminds himself that this needs to be done.

“If you’re gonna ask me if I’m alright again, I swear to all that is holy….” Chuck says quietly, and he keeps his gaze focused ahead of them.

“I was actually going to ask you to put the hat back on,” Raleigh says in a light tone to try and lift the mood. When Chuck looks at him, exasperated, Raleigh offers up the smallest of smiles.

After Chuck begrudgingly crams the hat back on his head, the two get out of the truck, and Raleigh comes around to the passenger side to join him. Chuck sort of hunches, like he’s trying to look as small and unnoticeable as possible, and he takes in their surroundings with interest. Raleigh’s close enough that he can see the way Chuck’s nostrils flare as he smells the air, like an animal, and it’s actually kind of bizarre. Little things like that serve to remind Raleigh of what Chuck really is, and it makes him feel… uncomfortable, to say the least. Something draws Chuck’s attention, so Raleigh follows his gaze to the bar across the street – there’s a group of people milling about outside, having a smoke, it looks like. Locals must love it, Raleigh thinks – they could hang around there until closing time and then just walk over to the diner for food afterwards. He looks back at Chuck, whose expression is difficult to read; he mostly just looks contemplative, deep in thought.

“I’d forgotten what it was like being around so many people,” he murmurs.

“Is it too much?” Raleigh asks. Tries not to sound as worried as he really is.

Chuck’s gaze doesn’t leave the cluster of people outside the bar, but he shakes his head. Raleigh glances back towards the bar again too.

“Do you want to check that place out?” he asks.

It’s like Chuck hasn’t heard him at first, but then he shakes his head again, snorting. Without saying anything, he brushes past Raleigh and makes his way towards the entrance of the diner, and Raleigh has no choice but to follow. They step into the warm, rustically-decorated interior, and Raleigh keeps a close eye on Chuck to make sure that he’s in control, especially as he stops just inside the door, his body tensing up and taking a defensive stance. A few of the patrons look up curiously, and Chuck sweeps his gaze over all of them, assessing them, but, not wanting to waste time or draw attention, Raleigh bumps Chuck’s elbow and starts towards the small, dimly-lit hallway that leads to the restrooms.

The hall provides a good deal of privacy from the other customers, as there’s a wall blocking Raleigh and Chuck from view. There’s a single payphone in between the two bathroom doors, and Raleigh picks it up to make sure it’s working, even though he’d had no doubt – being in the center of town, he knows this diner is like a hub for the people that live there. He glances sideways at Chuck, who’s making a face and looking _very_ uncomfortable, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides.

“What’s wrong?” Raleigh asks quickly.

“They smell _awful_.”

And Raleigh can’t help but chuckle a bit at that. “That’s not very nice,” he remarks, slightly teasing.

“You’d think so too if you could smell them,” Chuck says, cringing. He even goes as far as to reach up and cover his nose, and when he speaks again, his voice is muffled by his hand. “Their stenches are all combining like some bag of old, assorted potpourri. It’s disgusting, mate.”

“That’s a good thing,” Raleigh says. If Chuck doesn’t find their scents appealing, that means he has an even better chance of keeping himself under control, he thinks.

“Real easy for you to say.”

Taking off his gloves and shoving them into his coat pocket, Raleigh digs out the paper with Herc’s phone number on it – Mako had gotten in touch with him before she’d come to Alaska, she’d told him, as he’d been one of the first people she’d gone to for help in finding Raleigh. Then he pulls out the long distance phone card he’d acquired, and he grabs the phone receiver again. He brings it up to his ear, cradling it on his shoulder, and then he looks at Chuck again.

“You ready?”

Chuck slowly lowers the hand that had still been covering his nose, his eyes on the phone like it’s some sort of wild animal that he needs to be wary of. He blinks a few times, gaze drifting to Raleigh, and he nods, even though he doesn’t at all look prepared – with his wide, trepid eyes. Raleigh mirrors the nod and turns back to the phone, following the instructions on the long distance card and putting in the change – which is _a lot_. He’s almost able to dial Herc’s number by memory because of how often he’s studied it since Mako had given it to him, and just as he’s getting to the last number, Chuck sort of lurches forward, looking like he’s going to try and hang up the phone.

Raleigh reacts instinctively, grabbing Chuck’s wrist to stop him. Chuck looks at him, his expression mixed – he’s nervous and trying to hide it, and incredulous and angry that Raleigh had grabbed him. But neither of them say anything – they just look at one another, and Raleigh tries to him with his eyes. Surprisingly, it works. Chuck relaxes. Raleigh finishes dialing and switches the phone to his other ear, bringing it closer to Chuck, who lifts one of the earflaps on his cap and leans in – like he doesn’t have super strong hearing already.

Raleigh realizes that he’s holding his breath as they wait for it to start ringing, so he tries to be a little more casual for Chuck’s sake, tries not to look as scared as he feels. His stomach is twisted up and there’s a lump in his throat, but he knows he needs to be the strong one here. That’s how it always is – Chuck may be the vampire with all the supernatural abilities, but Raleigh is the rock, and he’s always going to be the rock.

When it doesn’t seem like anyone’s going to answer, Raleigh inwardly kicks himself, figuring he’d gotten the number wrong. He glances down at the scrap of paper that he’s been clasping in his fist, and as he looks over the number, mentally repeating it to himself, he hears a sudden gruff voice on the line.

“Yeah?”

It’s only one word, but it’s unmistakably Herc, though he sounds like he’s aged ten years at the least. Chuck seems to go even more rigid at Raleigh’s side, one of his hands going to the crook of Raleigh’s elbow, his fingers digging in even through the material of Raleigh’s coat and sweater. Raleigh can’t think – he starts to panic and almost slams the phone down.

But he’s able to get out, “Ah, Herc, it’s – I mean, Marshal –”

“Haven’t been your Marshal for a long time, Becket.”

“Right.”

There’s a pause. “Has Mako managed to find you?”

“Yeah, yeah – she got here about a week ago. Gave me your number.”

“Where’s ‘here,’ exactly?”

“Alaska…. Fairbanks.”

“Should’ve guessed you’d find your way back to the Last Frontier.” Herc’s voice muffles a little, sounds like he’s taking a drink of something, and then Raleigh hears the clink of a glass. “What can I help you with, Raleigh? You’re not always so inarticulate.”

Raleigh swallows audibly – maybe even loud enough for Herc to hear – and he licks his lips. “Oh, uh…” he says and trails off, which sounds like the dumbest thing one can say, especially considering he’s been practicing in his mind what he’d wanted to open with ever since Mako had first broached the subject with him. But none of it seems sufficient now.

How do you tell a man that his son isn’t dead? And worse, how do you tell him that he’s _un_ dead?

“Long distance ain’t cheap,” Herc ribs him with a half-hearted chuckle.

Raleigh makes a little noise in his throat, courtesy telling him to laugh along with the teasing, but feeling like he might throw up if he actually does. “I don’t know how to tell you this – it’s about Chuck.”

He hears Herc take a slow, even breath. “Go on then.”

“He’s… he’s not dead.”

There’s complete silence on Herc’s end.

Raleigh glances at Chuck, who raises his eyebrows and gives Raleigh an impatient look. He gestures with his hand, motioning for Raleigh to keep going, and Raleigh stammers a little and starts to rush out, “I know it sounds crazy –”

“How dare you?” Herc’s voice sounds low and dangerous – at least it shows where Chuck gets it from – and even through the phone, across thousands of miles, Raleigh can feel the man’s fury. He glances at Chuck, gestures to the phone, and Chuck quickly shakes his head – he looks so young in this moment, like a panicky kid, and Raleigh just wants to take care of everything.

So he tries, “I know, I wouldn’t believe it either –”

“No, you don’t know, Becket. You have no idea. Is this what you called me for? You find humor in this sort of thing now?”

“Don’t hang up,” Raleigh says quickly, fearing that if Herc ends the call, he won’t get another chance. There’s no way Herc will take another long distance call from him if Raleigh loses him now.

“Hang up? Oh, not until I’ve gotten my fill of telling you exactly what –”

“I’m not playing around, Herc –” Raleigh tries to get back control of the conversation.

“Of all the people in the world. What would your brother think?”

That’s when Chuck decides to cut in – as though he realizes it’s the only way, he abruptly grabs the phone and says one word into it: “Dad.”

He keeps the phone between them, and Raleigh strains his ears to listen, hearing nothing but silence on the other end of the line. He stops breathing just so it doesn’t hinder his hearing, and after what feels like forever but certainly isn’t – because otherwise, the phone would have disconnected them – Herc finally speaks.

“Charles?”

Raleigh looks at Chuck, who’s stone-faced and solemn, staring at the wall with wide eyes. Chuck nods, even though Herc can’t see him, and he says, curt and quiet, “Yeah.”

The noise Raleigh can just barely hear Herc make is wordless, but entirely too expressive. He sounds like he’s breaking down, guttural and pained. And by the way Chuck’s eyes close, by the wet red starting to gather under his fair lashes, Raleigh knows that if he were to listen any further, he’d be intruding. So he takes a few steps back, moving away from Chuck and feeling like there’s a heavy weight pressing against his chest.

Chuck braces an arm against the payphone, his other hand cradling the receiver against his ear, and he hangs his head, his shoulders slumped. After a moment, Chuck’s speaking again, his voice soft and unintelligible to Raleigh’s ears, but Raleigh doesn’t shift closer to make it out, despite his curiosity. It wouldn’t be right for him to listen in on something that’s so painfully personal for Chuck, and the only reason he’s remaining in the hallway at all is because he wants to make sure that Chuck is alright. When he does move forward, it’s to feed more change into the phone, and Chuck doesn’t react at all, too lost in his father’s voice to even remember that Raleigh’s there.

As optimistic as Mako had made Raleigh feel before, it’s all been wiped away. He wants to believe that this is the first step towards good things, but seeing how badly it’s hurting Chuck…. He doesn’t know.

The ride back to the cabin is long and quiet. Chuck stares morosely out the passenger window, not bothering to fidget like he had on the drive into town. He hasn’t spoken to Raleigh at all after hanging up the phone, and while Raleigh desperately wants to ask, he knows better. The call had lasted some time, with Raleigh feeding more money into the phone as it was needed, and inconspicuously shielding Chuck from view whenever someone went into or came out of the restrooms. When he was done, Chuck had thrust the receiver back at Raleigh, turning away and wiping at his face with the back of one of his arms – smearing his blood tears on the coat, which had thankfully, gone unnoticed against the dark material. Raleigh had originally gone to hang up, but on second thought, had raised the phone to his ear.

“Fairbanks?” Herc had asked him, his voice strained. And after asking for a number that Raleigh could be reached at, he’d simply said, “Tuesday,” before the line went dead.

As Raleigh parks his truck beside Mako’s rental, he throws an uncertain, sideways glance at Chuck. They both just sort of sit there as Raleigh kills the ignition, Chuck still staring out the window as though he’s purposely trying to avoid looking at Raleigh.

“Chuck…” Raleigh begins.

Without a word, Chuck throws open the door and he all but flies up to the porch, and disappears inside. He hides out in the attic for the rest of the day.

 

*

_If I had my way, I’d cut the calluses off your,_

_Off your breaking heart…. (If I could get past the sternum.)_

_Cauterize those wounds with every kiss I could give to you…._

_– “Demonology and Heartache,” Atreyu_

*


	3. Chapter 3

Mako, at least, remains optimistic. While Chuck avoids them, even going as far as to sleep in the attic during the day again, Raleigh starts to seriously question why he’d agreed to get in touch with Herc in the first place. But Mako tells him that it was the right thing to do, that she’s glad it happened. Her confidence isn’t as infectious as Raleigh wishes it was, but it _does_ help in its own way.

A few hours before dawn early Monday morning, Chuck finally wants to talk about it. Raleigh’s in his room, sitting at the end of the bed and going through his hospital contacts, getting rid of all of the ones that are beginning to be a hassle, all the people who are either starting to ask questions, or worse, starting to ask for more money. Chuck wanders into the room, soundless, save for the click of the door as he shuts it, and Raleigh glances up at him, mildly surprised, as it’s the first time since they’d called Herc that Chuck’s stepped foot into the room. He keeps his eyes on Chuck only a moment, and then pretends that he’s more interested in his little black book – if there’s one thing he knows about Chuck, it’s that Chuck hates to be looked at expectantly, hates for people to stare at him.

Chuck doesn’t say anything at first. Without even looking at Raleigh, he walks around to the side of the bed that he normally prefers sleeping on, and Raleigh feels the mattress shift with the added weight as he sits down. “He said Tuesday?” he asks. He doesn’t need to explain who he’s talking about.

“Yeah. I don’t know if that means he’s going to get in touch with us tomorrow or what…” Raleigh says, and he glances over his shoulder only to be met with the sight of Chuck’s back.

“Nah, if I know my old man, means he’s going to be arriving in town tomorrow. Give you a call when he touches down,” Chuck says with a snort.  

“That’s a good thing, then…. Right?”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It’s really not. Your father probably hates me – and he has every reason to, on account of me not telling him for like five months that his son _wasn’t_ lying dead at the bottom of the ocean. I should have tried to contact him sooner. Might have done you some good.”

Chuck spins to look at him, and Raleigh meets his gaze evenly. “What’s that supposed to mean? What? Like I wouldn’t have killed those people if you’d called dear old daddy for me?”

“Maybe,” Raleigh says coolly.

Narrowing his eyes, Chuck turns back around. Raleigh stares at the hard line of his shoulders, and then he stands up, closing the address book with a snap. He shuffles across the room to place it on the dresser, while trying to ignore the fact that his list of contacts is growing shorter and shorter by the day.

“I didn’t tell him about any of that,” Chuck says suddenly. “I didn’t tell him that I’m – that I’m a killer. I just… said I wasn’t human anymore. That I’m not dead, but not alive either.”

“What did he say?”

It’s like Chuck’s pretending not to have heard him – it takes him a second to answer. “He sorta just brushed it all aside, actually. Everything I tried to tell him, he just brushed it off. Kept saying my name. Asking if I was… real.”

Raleigh closes his eyes. Because he really doesn’t want to think about what it must have done to Herc, having this sort of bombshell dropped on him so out of the blue – no matter if it was ‘good’ news or not. And he can’t comprehend what it must be like for Chuck, to have to try and explain something even he’s not sure of. Like always, Raleigh blames himself. If only he hadn’t waited so long, maybe this could have been easier.

“Raleigh.”

Chuck’s tone is so serious that Raleigh turns to him, surprised. It’s rare for Chuck to say his name like that – it’s usually sarcastic, or angry, or condescending, or any combination of the three. Chuck’s still on the bed, his shoulders hunched and head hanging, and he’s staring sullenly down at the floor, with his arms resting on his knees. He might as well have not said Raleigh’s name at all, because he doesn’t look up, and he doesn’t speak. Raleigh hesitates, not knowing whether or not he should prompt Chuck to go on.

At last, Chuck asks, “What if when he sees me, he’d rather I was dead after all?”

And Raleigh doesn’t think he’s ever heard him sound so small before. “Chuck….”

“What if he takes one look at me and wants nothing to do with what I’ve become?”

“He won’t.” Raleigh returns to the bed, coming to a slow, almost uncertain stop in front of Chuck. He studies him for a brief moment and says, “You’re his son – his _only_ son.”

“But –”

“If I found out Yancy was out there, if he was like you – not dead, but not alive – I’d be thrilled. No matter what he was or what he’d done, he’d still be my brother, and I’d do anything to have in my life again. Even if it didn’t work out, I’d be grateful for just another chance to see him. Your father won’t care what you are, you’re his kid before anything else.”

Chuck looks up at him, eyes wide and searching Raleigh’s face like he’s looking for the answers to unasked questions. “You reckon maybe he is?” he asks. To clarify, he adds, “You think Yancy could be out there somewhere?”

Raleigh had toyed with the idea a lot in the beginning. After Chuck had arrived, Raleigh had spent many days laying awake and trying to get used to his new sleeping schedule, and that had given him a lot of time to think on it. He’d contemplated what it would have been like if Yancy were the one who’d shown up at his door instead of Chuck – if it were Yancy who he had to clean up after and care for. But then logic had set in. Chuck may have been disoriented and mixed-up at first, not at all himself, but it’s clear now that he’s the same person he once was, with the same thoughts and memories. In the years since his death, there’d been plenty of time for Yancy to seek Raleigh out if he really was out there.

After a few restless days, thinking about it for too long had gotten to be too painful.

He shakes his head.

“Do you think there’s anyone? Like me?” Chuck asks next.

“I don’t know,” Raleigh answers honestly.

“Don’t rightly matter, I guess. We’re doing alright on our own.”

“Would you rather be with someone who was like you?” Raleigh asks. He’s never thought of searching for others before – it had never even crossed his mind. He’d sort of just assumed it was an isolated case. “Someone who could show you the ropes?”

“I know the ropes well enough.” Chuck almost sounds indignant. “’Sides, that’s what I got you for, yeah?”

“But –”

“Fuck’s sake, Raleigh. If you want to get rid of me, just bloody say so.”

“No, that’s not – you know that’s not it. I just wonder….”

“You’re all I need,” Chuck says shortly. Raleigh’s eyebrows go up just a little, and Chuck ducks his head, grumbling. “I mean… you’re good enough.”

“Good to know.”

“ _Raleigh_ … I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

Raleigh plays dumb. “Tell me what?”

Chuck pauses, and then he looks back at Raleigh. “You’re everything. To me. I mean, it was bound to happen eventually, since you’re the only person I see on a regular basis, since I rely on you and all,” he says. “I know it’s not easy for you, and it certainly ain’t a picnic for me. But short of me being a murderer, there’s not much I’d change about this whole thing. Not even if it meant me being with people like me.”

He’s rambling, and it’s an uncomfortable sort of rambling, Raleigh can tell – he’s not used to saying what he really feels. But that doesn’t mean Raleigh can’t understand the meaning behind his words, and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate it. He nods a little, not knowing how to respond.

Chuck leans in a little. “I don’t like Mori being here,” he says conspiratorially, with a glance at the door as though he expects to find her listening in, despite the fact that he’d closed it when he came in. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t like _her_ , I just – I liked that it was just you and me. I liked that it was us alone and against the world. But if her being here is what you think is best, I can deal.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Raleigh asks, amused and a little perplexed by the sudden turn in the conversation.

“My old man might try to convince me to go back to Australia with him. And I know you – you’d tell me to go.”

Raleigh doesn’t argue. It’s true.

“But I’m telling you now – whether you think it’s best or not, I ain’t going _anywhere_ without you. Period. That’s where I’m drawing the line.”

It’s arrogant as he says it, proud and stubborn. But Raleigh’s pretty sure that’s as openly romantic as Chuck Hansen gets, so he takes it for what it is. He nods again, dropping his gaze, and unconsciously, he reaches for Chuck, pushes his fingers into Chuck’s hair. Chuck presses against his touch like he’s seeking more of it, and he stares up at Raleigh with a silent question coming to his eyes.

Raleigh obliges. He leans in and kisses Chuck, and Chuck’s response is quick and passionate, one of his hands coming up to grasp the front of Raleigh’s T-shirt, his mouth slanting against Raleigh’s. Raleigh lets himself savor the moment – he figures they won’t get to do much of this once Herc’s arrived, that is, if Herc doesn’t, you know, murder him.

He goes to pull away after a minute, but Chuck’s kisses become harder, more demanding, and he tugs on Raleigh’s shirt like he’s trying to bring him down on top of him. Raleigh turns his head to break away, breathless like Chuck had been literally stealing the life out of him with every kiss, and he smiles slightly.

“Mako’s downstairs,” he says.

“Does it look like I give a damn?” Chuck rasps against his jaw, where his mouth’s taken up ghosting across his skin. “ _I need you_.”

And well, how can Raleigh say no to that? Especially when Chuck’s tone is so raw, when he sounds so sincere.

He goes with Chuck, lets him pull him down onto the bed with him, and Chuck’s mouth finds his again, hard and desperate. He grabs Raleigh, rolling him onto his back sharply, and Raleigh’s hands go to Chuck’s hips as the vampire hovers over him. His kisses grow more urgent, and his hands rove over every part of Raleigh’s body that he can reach, his cold fingers digging into Raleigh’s skin even through his clothes, like he’s trying to punish Raleigh for not being able to figure out more quickly what he wants. Raleigh grabs at Chuck’s wrists to try and slow him down, but Chuck just tears his hands away. Brings them to Raleigh’s shirt like he’s going to tear the offending garment off, his fingers twisting into the material so hard Raleigh hears the fabric start to tear. Again, he grabs for Chuck’s wrists, only this time he’s a little more firm in trying to stop him.

Chuck makes a huffing noise at him, offended about being stopped, and he says once more, “I need you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Raleigh says lightly. He slides his hands up Chuck’s arms, over his shoulders and up his neck, and cupping his face, he lifts Chuck’s head up some so he can look at his face. He examines Chuck’s expression, trying to read him, and he asks, “What do you want?”

Chuck blinks, seeming confused. Then he looks contemplative and gives a quick shake of his head in lieu of a shrug. “Your warmth,” he says simply, like Raleigh’s stupid for having to ask.

Raleigh considers for a few moments, thinks Chuck probably isn’t even sure what he means himself, and he leans up to capture Chuck’s mouth with his own once more. As he does so, he slides one of his hands down Chuck’s front, finding the bulge in his pants. He shapes his fingers around it and squeezes lightly, and Chuck makes a quick, surprised sound.

Raleigh nods – as if this is a simple conversation– and he says, “I got you. I know what you need.”

Chuck looks all too happy to trust Raleigh, looks relieved even, and then his mouth is covering Raleigh’s again, almost like he’s planning on smothering him. As Raleigh tries to match the unrelenting kiss Chuck’s delivering, he shifts beneath Chuck, moving closer towards the side of the bed so he can reach the condoms. As he keeps a hand moving against Chuck’s cock, kneading and palming it through his jeans, feeling it grow harder at his touch, Raleigh reaches blindly for the nightstand. He comes back with a condom and the bottle of lube they’d used the first time, setting them down beside him on the mattress so they’re easier to reach when they need them, but Chuck’s too busy trying to wear Raleigh’s lips down to nothing to notice.

His hands creep under Raleigh’s shirt now, skin cool and fingers pressing firmly against Raleigh’s ribs as he explores, and he sort of rolls his hips down, pressing against Raleigh’s hand for more friction. He’s almost uncertain, like he’s testing out what it feels like to be in control, and for the most part, Raleigh’s content to go along with whatever he wants. With Raleigh’s assistance, Chuck pulls Raleigh’s shirt off of him and tosses it aside, and then he turns to sweep his gaze over every inch of Raleigh’s bare torso like he’s never seen it before, his eyes dark with either lust or hunger – it’s hard to tell with him. His gaze darts up to Raleigh’s face, and as he leans in, he’s almost hesitant, and he presses his lips to the center of Raleigh’s chest.

The moment contact is made, Chuck’s eyes flutter closed. “It’s like there’s fire under your skin,” he murmurs against him, lips brushing Raleigh’s skin as he speaks.

And Raleigh’s not an idiot – he knows it’s not a compliment – but he can’t help but find satisfaction in Chuck’s words. He’s not saying he wants to be worshipped, but it’s certainly nice to feel like you are. As Chuck’s mouth moves again, kissing a line along the top of Raleigh’s chest, Raleigh brings his other hand up to thread his fingers through Chuck’s hair.  Encouraged by this, his kisses against Raleigh’s chest becoming firmer. He trails his lips down to Raleigh’s stomach, still kissing, but starting to use his tongue as well. His fingers splay out across Raleigh’s ribs again, palms spread wide, and he caresses up Raleigh’s sides like he’s mapping him out, paying attention to every minute detail as if this is the only chance he’ll ever get. Raleigh is very nearly entranced by his passion and interest, and he can only watch, chest rising and falling calmly with his breathing, as Chuck’s mouth works against his abdomen, his hands roaming the expanse of Raleigh’s torso.

When Chuck glances up at him, his fangs are out. A thrill runs through Raleigh at the sight, his heart starting to beat a little faster. As usual, the sensation is somewhat mixed – mostly excited and anticipatory, but with the smallest hint of fear. Not because he thinks Chuck would ever hurt him, but because those razor sharp teeth aren’t exactly normal, and seeing them so close to his own flesh is just a bit disconcerting, especially when you know what they’re capable of. But this is Chuck. And Raleigh, well… he loves him. So with his hand still in Chuck’s hair, he tugs a little and says, “Come here.”

Chuck lets Raleigh pull him up, and the moment their faces are level with one another, Raleigh covers his mouth with his own in a hard kiss. He helps Chuck out of his own shirt and Chuck tosses it aside a little angrier than he had Raleigh’s, like it irritates him to have to deal with clothes in the first place. Raleigh’s hand returns to where it’d been pressing against Chuck’s cock through his jeans, and his other moves up Chuck’s side, stopping to settle against one of his brawny shoulders. He lets his tongue tease at the needle points of Chuck’s fangs, getting a soft moan of sorts for his effort, and Chuck pushes against his hand again, grinds his hips even as Raleigh squeezes him through the denim.

“I know what you need,” Raleigh says once more, breaking the kiss, and he brings his other hand down to join the one still at Chuck’s groin.

He pops the button of Chuck’s jeans and slides the zipper down with ease, and Chuck hesitates over top of him, looking down and watching as though he’s hypnotized. He’s got nothing on underneath his jeans, and Raleigh pushes them down his hips just a little bit, before sticking a hand under the denim and grabbing Chuck’s bare cock. Chuck hisses, his hips jerking forward, and Raleigh eases his erection out, gives it a few short pumps.

Raising his gaze back up to meet Chuck’s, he picks up the condom again and tears into the wrapper with his teeth. Chuck remains silent as Raleigh pulls it out and brings it down to his cock, and Raleigh gets the impression, as he rolls the condom down Chuck’s length, that were Chuck human, he’d be holding his breath right about now. With the condom on, Raleigh strokes him a few more times, isn’t satisfied until he gets a low rumble of a moan from Chuck’s chest, and then Raleigh undoes his own pants, wriggling to shove them – and his thermal underwear – off, which is a little difficult, thanks to Chuck towering over him like so. But getting the picture, Chuck sits up and helps, grabbing the pants and long johns and throwing them off the bed with the same impatience as he’d thrown his shirt off.

He hesitates, his eager gaze drinking Raleigh in once more, and he lets one of his hands trail up the inside of Raleigh’s thigh, cool palm sliding up to Raleigh’s half-hardened cock. He takes it in a loose grasp, giving it a single, slow upstroke, and Raleigh’s eyes flutter, his hand fumbling as it reaches for the bottle of lube. Chuck seems surprised, like he still hasn’t comprehended what Raleigh’s doing, even after Raleigh’s put the condom on him, and he furrows his brow down at Raleigh almost questioningly.

Raleigh simply nods, uncapping the small bottle and pouring some of the liquid into his hand. He rubs his palms together and then grabs Chuck’s cock again, layering the lubricant along his full length in a few easy motions. Then he shifts his hips and reaches down with his other hand to prepare himself for Chuck, spreading the oil all around his hole and making sure he’s slick enough so that it doesn’t hurt. He rushes, grunting a little as he works his own fingers into himself, and the whole time, he keeps stroking Chuck, who’s starting to move, pushing himself into Raleigh’s lazy movements. 

When he’s satisfied, Raleigh reclaims his hands and quickly turns over onto his stomach, propping his ass up. He looks over his shoulder at Chuck, who’s staring down at him with darkened, ravenous eyes, though there’s still a hint of uncertainty brewing in his expression.

Raleigh raises his eyebrows a little. “Trust me,” he says.

And that does the trick.

Chuck moves closer, making a noise in his throat that Raleigh thinks is supposed to be words, but they don’t come out right. It almost seems as though Chuck wants to tell him he has no idea what he’s doing, but of course that same insecurity he’d had even in life makes him not want to admit to anything he might perceive as a personal flaw or fault. Raleigh wants to reassure him, tell him he’s worrying himself over nothing, but he knows Chuck – knows it’ll just make him feel worse about his lack of experience.

One of Chuck’s hands settles on Raleigh’s waist, and Raleigh turns back around, lowering himself to his elbows and resting his forehead on an arm. When he feels Chuck pressing against him, his breath catches in his throat, before he forces himself to exhale. He tries to relax, for Chuck’s sake more so than his own, but it’s been a while since he’s done this.

“Raleigh…” Chuck says, sounding unconfident in a way Raleigh’s never heard.

And so Raleigh does the only thing he can think to do. He pushes himself back, takes Chuck’s cock into his ass himself. A murmured string of curses leaves Chuck and Raleigh has to pause to get his bearings, to get over the initial discomfort. But for as cold as Chuck normally feels on any given day, it’s not so bad that it’s unsettling like Raleigh had imagined it might be – in fact, it’s barely noticeable to him.  

Or maybe he’s just getting used to Chuck’s temperature.

Chuck’s hand tightens on Raleigh’s hip, fingertips digging into his skin, and he doesn’t really react for a moment. Raleigh dares a quick glance over his shoulder again, and Chuck meets his gaze squarely like he’d been waiting for it. His eyes, still dark with his hunger, have a fire of a different sorts in them now, one Raleigh doesn’t want to make any assumptions about.

But one that feels pretty damn passionate.

Something unspoken passes between them, just like the first time, and it makes Raleigh’s chest feel tight. He could almost curse Chuck aloud – he was never supposed to feel like this about the murderous vampire that’d shown up on his doorstep with nowhere else to go. How had things ended up like this?

As if looking at Raleigh encourages Chuck, he moves – pushes his hips forward and drives his cock deeper into Raleigh, his movements stiff and unsure. Raleigh’s fingers twist into the bed sheet beneath him as he turns away again, an involuntary noise spilling from him, and he has to remind himself once more to relax.

Chuck meets that sound with a low groan, and he murmurs thickly, “You’re so warm, Ray. So bloody warm.”

 

*

 

Chuck can’t think of anything in the world that’s ever felt like this. Raleigh is tight around him, clenching him almost like a fist, and he’s hot – impossibly hot. _Alive_. And this is everything that Chuck had been wanting, everything he’d felt like he needed. And though they’ve just started, Chuck can’t help the noise he’d made – the sensation of being inside Raleigh, and maybe the knowledge itself, is intense and overwhelming.

The hand that he’d been using to guide himself to Raleigh’s ass joins the other on Raleigh’s waist, which is still clutching his hip tight, his fingertips dimpling the taut skin. He pushes forward, sinks into Raleigh the rest of the way, buries himself in that unbelievable heat, and his eyes shut at the pleasure that ripples through him.

A low noise wells in Raleigh’s chest, and Chuck isn’t sure if it’s good or bad.

“Is this – are you –?” he starts to ask, immediately regretting it and hating himself for how stupidly insecure he sounds.

But Raleigh interrupts him, quickly saying, “It’s good.” One of his hands comes back, his fingers finding and stroking at Chuck’s wrist to reassure him.

So Chuck starts moving. Though he’s never done this before, it’s just something that kind of comes natural to someone, he reckons, and while his actions start off somewhat uncoordinated, he doesn’t stop, and instead starts to find his rhythm. In his mind, he pictures how Raleigh had moved, mimics the dexterity with which Raleigh had thrust into him. And it starts to get easier, his motions become swifter and more smooth. With every thrust, he sheathes his full length inside Raleigh, pulls back just a few inches, and then drives forward again. Each time, Raleigh’s breath hitches, like he can’t quite get a hold on it, and that sound is driving Chuck crazy. Combine that with the sound of Raleigh’s heart hammering against his ribcage, and the way Chuck swears he can hear Raleigh’s blood pumping through his veins, and red starts to blur at the edges of Chuck’s vision.

He feels soft beneath Chuck. Pliant and fragile. Human. Chuck’s fangs twinge in pain.

Raleigh starts moving with him, pushing his hips back to meet Chuck’s thrusts. His back is curved, chest flat against the mattress and his ass in the air – round, firm, golden, perfect in the way you’d expect the great Raleigh Becket’s ass to look. Chuck can’t quite help himself – he slides his hands down to that taut ass, cups each cheek and squeezes, spreading them slightly, which gives himself a better view of his cock as it enters Raleigh. He groans. Giving Raleigh’s ass a parting grasp, he slides both of his hands along the bow of Raleigh’s back next, up and down, enjoying the feel of Raleigh’s muscles beneath his heated skin. A thought occurs to him, and he nudges at Raleigh’s hips, pushing him into a completely prone position on his stomach, and Chuck goes with him, keeping his cock inside of him.

A low moan leaves Raleigh – it sounds surprised, but pleasantly so – and Chuck straddles his thighs from behind, placing his hands on the mattress on either side of Raleigh to better brace himself. And he starts thrusting again, grinding his hips down, and Raleigh shifts a little beneath him, propping his ass up slightly to make it easier for the both of them. He stretches his arms out in front of him, grabbing the pillow like he needs something to hold onto, and turning his face to the side, he presses his cheek against the mattress. His eyes are closed, and though Chuck can only see a part of his face, he looks flushed and… well, alive. And that’s what drives Chuck so crazy, that someone can look so _alive_.

After that, it’s fast and almost rushed, with the two of them staying as quiet as they possibly can so that Mako doesn’t overhear from downstairs. Chuck finds a rhythm again, and his motions cause Raleigh to grind against the mattress beneath him, and soon he’s making the softest sounds in his throat, his fingers twisting into the pillowcase in his slowly building pleasure.

Chuck’s own pleasure is quickly becoming an addiction. He moves faster against Raleigh, thrusts harder, just needs _more_ , and he lowers himself over Raleigh, all but crushing him against the mattress. He presses his mouth to Raleigh’s ear, feels Raleigh shudder at the soft, chaste touch, and then Raleigh’s lifting his head, turning more so that his mouth can seek Chuck’s out. They kiss somewhat messily – Chuck’s too busy focusing on moving his hips to be able to put much effort into the kiss – and it doesn’t help when Raleigh’s tongue flicks over his fangs, sending electricity shooting through him.

Chuck pulls away, breaking the kiss to let out a noise mixed with a moan and a sharp curse, and he’s starting to lose control, practically slamming into Raleigh now. It’s primal, with the sound of skin against skin, and there’s something so carnal about that sound that just urges Chuck on further. He’s tight all over, aching and ready for release, a fire spreading through his gut, and his gums are tingling non-stop in his need to bite Raleigh – the feeling reminds him of what a television looks like when there’s nothing but static, or like the memory of the pins and needles you get when your arm falls asleep, something that hasn’t happened to him since his death.

Leaning back down, he buries his face in Raleigh’s shoulder, kissing at the side of Raleigh’s neck – it’s glossy with a thin sheen of perspiration, the taste of which is almost as good as Raleigh’s blood – and he instinctively grazes his teeth, the tips of his fangs, across Raleigh’s skin. It takes everything in him not to just sink them in – he knows they’ll slide right in, knows Raleigh wouldn’t be able to prevent it if he tried. 

Raleigh gives a breathless groan, bucking beneath Chuck, and he grunts out, “Yes.” Then he adds, “Do it,” like the first time they’d had sex, only this time it sounds like a command, firm and unquestioning.

And it’s like Chuck’s compelled to, like he simply _must_ obey his human’s every word – he bites Raleigh’s neck.

Raleigh arches beneath him again, moaning a lot louder than he’s done up until now, and he presses his face into the mattress to muffle it. Chuck meets the sound with one of his own, an appreciative grunt in his throat as Raleigh’s blood passes his lips, the sickly sweet metallic tang exploding across his taste buds. As he takes a pull on it and swallows, savoring the feeling of it sliding down his throat, Chuck only has to rut against Raleigh a few more times before his orgasm crashes into him like a tidal wave.

Blinding pleasure courses through him, makes his body give a great shudder before he goes completely still over Raleigh, and he keeps his mouth firmly attached to Raleigh’s neck, groaning thickly as he swallows yet more of his blood. He comes hard and quick, so intensely that he almost can’t even feel it, especially as that red starts to cover his line of vision entirely, and he becomes almost painfully aware of the sound of Raleigh’s heartbeat. Instinct wants him to kill, but something is able to keep him from giving in, and he pulls his mouth away from Raleigh’s neck in a quick, jerking motion, blood dribbling down his chin and onto Raleigh’s shoulder as he rears his head back, riding out the final ebbing tides of his climax.

He doesn’t move for a long moment, even after he’s already emptied himself entirely. He just stays there, braced over Raleigh – who’s body is all but heaving as he pants – and he revels in the afterglow of a powerful orgasm. And adding to it is how good Raleigh’s blood tastes, the way it lingers in his mouth like the too strong vodka his father would let him have after they bagged a Kaiju, only ten times more intoxicating. When he finally does move, it’s because he’s realized that in his selfishness, he’d paid Raleigh’s pleasure absolutely no mind whatsoever.

He slides from Raleigh’s ass and shifts, lifting most of his weight off of him, and then he grabs Raleigh’s hip and turns him over onto his back. Raleigh pretty much keeps the same position, stretches his arms up over his head and writhes a little, and Chuck looks down at the wet spot on the sheets, a little surprised.

Raleigh snorts out a little laugh and covers his face with an arm, almost like he’s embarrassed. “How bad is it I can come like that with just you biting me?” he asks. As if his words have just reminded him, he covers his neck with his other hand to stop the trickle of blood.

“It really feels that good?” Chuck asks curiously. “Getting bitten?”

“When you say it in that tone of voice, almost makes me sound weird,” Raleigh says.

“You are weird.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

“No,” Chuck says quickly, impulsively. Like a fucking schoolboy trying to hide his crush. He curses himself inwardly.

And Raleigh just grins at him.

When he disappears to the bathroom, Chuck gets rid of the condom and changes the bed sheets – the sun is rising, but he moves quickly before the lethargy can set in. As the shower starts running, he pulls on a pair of Raleigh’s sweatpants and it hits him that he doesn’t have any of his own clothing. Ever since that first night in Kowloon Bay, when he’d shown up in nothing but the remainder of his Drivesuit, he’d simply worn Raleigh’s clothes. He wonders if he ought to ask for some of his own, finally. Figures it doesn’t matter by now.

He’s laying on top of the blankets when Raleigh returns shortly after, hair still damp and neck bandaged. And bizarrely, he looks more exhausted than Chuck’s ever seen before – it’s like the shower washed away not only the lingering traces of sweat and sex, but also the mask that Raleigh had been wearing to hide how much taking care of Chuck has worn him down. He looks so much older than the man who’d Chuck tormented and taunted at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and he’s barely even recognizable as the cocky rockstar that Chuck had looked up to when he was growing up.

And Chuck feels guilty. The Kaiju didn’t turn Raleigh into this…. He did.

A guilt that only intensifies as Chuck watches Raleigh climb gingerly under the covers.

“I hurt you.”

Raleigh shoots him a short, skeptical look as he gets comfortable, like Chuck’s being silly. “It’s just been a while –”

Chuck narrows his eyes and arches his eyebrows, but he doesn’t have to say anything to make the words die in Raleigh’s throat.

Raleigh sighs, exasperated. “It was your first time. To be totally honest, I expected it to be a lot worse.” He doesn’t need to say ‘ _with your lack of self-control_ ,’ but Chuck hears the words anyway, and he lowers his gaze, trying not to apply the implications to the people he’s killed. Raleigh studies him for a long moment, as if reading Chuck’s mind, and he says, “Besides – I still enjoyed myself. Next time will be even better.”

“Next time?” Chuck echoes, and yeah, that piques a silly, boyish excitement in him.

Raleigh flashes that grin that only he knows how to do – both sheepish and smug at the same time – and he says, “I said I liked it, didn’t I?”

As if to prove his point, he moves closer and leans in to press a kiss to Chuck’s jaw. Then he slings an arm across Chuck’s middle and gets comfortable again, his warmth washing over Chuck even despite the blankets separating them. When his eyes close, Chuck can’t help but to watch him, and he wishes he could stay awake longer than Raleigh, even though he can feel that heavy, drugging exhaustion settling in his bones. He just wants to see if sleep eases all of the weariness and stress from Raleigh’s features, wants to see if it makes him look at all like the way he had when Chuck had been fifteen and looking at him on magazines.

“You’re staring at me.” Raleigh speaks, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Don’t flatter yourself, mate.”

Raleigh cracks one of his eyes open and Chuck doesn’t have enough time to look casual – so instead, he glowers. Raleigh chuckles and closes both eyes again. Chuck, however, doesn’t stop staring. Because he’s quickly remembering what had been weighing on him before he’d come up to the bedroom – he’d hoped Raleigh would provide a distraction, and while it’d been good while it’d lasted – really good, amazingly good, phenomenal, even – that dark cloud is hanging over Chuck again and he can’t shake it. Knows it was pointless of him to think that he could.

“Raleigh….” But he trails off, not knowing how to continue.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Raleigh says softly.

“You don’t sound too sure of that.”

For a long moment, Chuck thinks Raleigh’s trying to pretend he’s already passed out. But then he moves his hand, stroking a soft circle on Chuck’s stomach. He doesn’t say anything, but the caress is a response in its own right. Chuck can’t keep his eyes open any longer, so he lets them fall closed, and he decides that if Raleigh can do this, he can do this. Granted, Raleigh’s not the one who has to explain to his father that he’s a killer – a monster – but still.

Raleigh keeps rubbing that small circle against his skin as sleep sets in, and the feathery touch of the warm pads of his fingers fades away until Chuck feels nothing at all anymore.

 

*

_Your love fills me up when the blood in my body’s drained,_

_And your strength is my backbone when I feel every bone break._

_– “Nevada’s Grace,” Atreyu_

*

 

The next day seems to happen in a blur, too fast.

Raleigh feels ill the moment he wakes up, his stomach tight and tense and clenched into a hot fist, and Mako watches him like a hawk, like she’s waiting for him to snap. She seems to be feeling her own anxiety over it all, but she’s a lot more composed than Raleigh is, and when Raleigh messes up the first pot of coffee because his thoughts are so jumbled, she sits him down at the kitchen table and makes a new, fresh pot herself.

“Is Chuck nervous?” she asks as she pours two mugs.

“Oh yeah, he’s terrified. Completely petrified, though he’d never say anything.”

“And you?”

“Pretty much exactly the same.”

She turns to join him at the table, and says very simply, “Good.” His eyebrows shoot up as she sits down beside him. “I’m still mad at you. You didn’t think I’d forgive you so easily, did you?”

He smiles a little, ducking his gaze. “Right.”

“But don’t worry – I want to be mad at you for a much longer time than this, so I promise to stop Herc if it looks like he’s about to kill you,” she says.

“You really are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little bit.”

And when the phone rings a little later, about twenty minutes before sunset, Raleigh knows instantly who it is, and his stomach turns over, mouth and throat drying. He and Mako are still at the kitchen table, playing a card game, and he glances quickly at her. She takes pity on him and answers it, though she speaks too softly and indistinctly for him to hear. After she hangs up, she turns back to him, frowning sympathetically.

“He’s in town. Got a room at an inn,” she says. “I told him I’d come and get him – but not for another hour or so. When Chuck’s up.”

Raleigh nods, and then he has to take a deep, steadying breath because _wow_. This is really happening. Herc Hansen is in town to see his _vampire_ son, who Raleigh was previously hiding from the world. Raleigh feels like he should probably just go ahead and dig a grave for himself because Herc will probably beat him to death with his bare hands when he sees him, Mako or not.

About forty-five minutes later, Chuck’s in the shower when Mako leaves to pick Herc up – taking Raleigh’s truck because it rides better in the current weather than the rental SUV she’d gotten when she’d arrived. Raleigh paces in the living room, wearing circles into the hardwood floor, and when Chuck joins him, he takes up a position at the window, staring outside and standing still as a statue, looming like the sort of monster you’d expect him to be.

Raleigh stops. “Are you –?”

“If you ask me if I’m okay, I’m gonna rip off both your arms and beat you with them.”

Raleigh pushes out an edgy chuckle and he shakes his head. “That threat almost seems scary, knowing that you actually _could_ do that.”

“Could have done it as a human too,” Chuck murmurs. An eternity seems to pass, and then he finally moves, turning away from the window to face Raleigh. His hair is wet from the shower still, he looks as pale as ever, and there’s something else beneath the surface, something that makes his expression look tight and severe. It’s fear. But he’d sooner gnaw his own hand off than admit it, Raleigh knows. “You can stop trying to pretend you’re not afraid of him. I don’t need you to be strong for me,” he sneers.

Raleigh opens his mouth to tell Chuck that that’s not at all what he’s doing, but Chuck looks at him skeptically, and Raleigh knows there’s no point in lying. So he just nods, and after a moment, he goes back to pacing. And Chuck, after watching him for a few minutes, goes back to staring out the window.

Raleigh’s perched on the arm of the couch, bouncing one of his legs impatiently and chewing on his fingernails, when Chuck makes a strangled noise in his throat. He immediately jumps to his feet and hurries to Chuck’s side, peering out in time to see his truck pulling to a stop in front of the cabin. His heart clenches in his chest like it’s going to seize up totally, and it feels like his stomach has been turned into a bowling ball.

“Oh,” he says stupidly.

Chuck takes a few steps away from the window, and there’s a panicked look on his face, like a deer in the headlights. He makes a sudden move like he’s going to try and run away, somehow flee the scene before Herc gets inside, but Raleigh quickly grabs his arm. He tries to reassure Chuck, speaks softly to him in a way that makes him think of when people are trying to soothe a spooked animal, but Chuck doesn’t look reassured in the least. He doesn’t even look like he can hear what Raleigh’s saying.

He pulls his arm out of Raleigh’s hold, and when Raleigh grabs it again, he pulls it away again. “No, he can’t see me,” he says quickly, would be breathlessly if he were a human. “He _can’t_ see me.”

“It’ll be fine,” Raleigh tries.

Chuck isn’t listening. Repeats himself. “He can’t see me.”

They can hear the doors of the truck shut.

“Chuck….”

Footsteps on the porch.

Chuck stares at the doorway of the living room, shaking his head, and this time, Raleigh places a hand on his face, tries to get Chuck to look at him. “You need to relax.” Which is a load of shit coming from Raleigh, who almost feels ready to throw up.

The front door opens, and despite Raleigh’s intentions to calm Chuck, he finds himself tensing up and spinning to face the hall too. He shifts, unconsciously putting himself between Chuck and the doorway like he can try and hide him, and the two of them listen as Mako and Herc come into the foyer. Herc’s voice can be heard, asking where Chuck is, and it seems entirely too bizarre to hear it – it just doesn’t seem like this is really happening.

Herc’s lean frame fills the doorway as he stops just inside the room, and Raleigh might as well not even be there at all – Herc stares right through him at Chuck. His expression is instantly a mix of pain and astonishment, and he brings a hand up to cover his mouth, the expression twisting and becoming more intense as he fully takes in the sight of Chuck. Hesitantly, Raleigh takes a few steps sideways, and he throws a quick glance at Chuck, who is still and unmoving, but staring at Herc with red brimming in his eyes.

Abruptly, Herc strides across the room and pulls Chuck into a hard embrace. Chuck could have had time to move away, of course, because no matter how unexpected a gesture it is, nothing beats vampire agility, but instead, Chuck seems to fold in on himself and collapse against his father. Herc’s speaking quietly, so soft that Raleigh can only hear the murmur of his voice, and he’s touching Chuck all over, squeezing his shoulders and pulling on his hair, making sure he’s real and actually _there_. And Chuck just hangs his head, looking small, looking like a child.

Raleigh knows he’s intruding.

He sees movement at the doorway, and he turns to find Mako looking at him with a deep frown. Fighting the urge to steal a last look of the Hansens, he shuffles quickly out of the room. Mako bumps her elbow against his, and they don’t need to speak – she’s wearing her coat still, so he grabs his, and the two of them step outside onto the porch to give Herc and Chuck the time that they need. This isn’t something that anyone else needs to bear witness to.

It’s snowing. The woods surrounding the cabin are still and serene, and when the truck engine stops ticking, there’s complete silence. Raleigh and Mako stand side-by-side on the porch – his hands in his pockets, her arms across her chest, hugging herself – and they watch the snowfall.

“They’ll be fine,” Mako says eventually. And when he doesn’t respond, she turns to face him. “This is going to work out, Raleigh. Chuck needs Herc as much as he needs you, and Herc –”

“I know… I should have told him sooner,” he says.

She gives him a tight-lipped smile, but she doesn’t say anything more, and they go back to standing in silence.

When the front door opens, they both turn to find Herc stepping out onto the porch. He looks tired and weathered, like he’s a good fifty years older than he’d been the last time Raleigh had seen him, and his eyes are puffy and red. Mako looks at Raleigh, and then suddenly she’s walking towards the door, and before Raleigh has any time to react, she’s gone. She’d left him with Herc.

The oldest Hansen pulls the door shut after she glides past him, and with squared shoulders (and balled-up fists, Raleigh doesn’t fail to notice), he moves towards Raleigh, stopping beside him and taking Mako’s place. There’s a lump in Raleigh’s throat, and it feels like something is compressing his chest, making it harder to breathe. For what could be hours, they both just stand there, and he starts to feel a desperation welling up inside of him, an urgent need for Herc to just say _something_. He wants Herc to yell at him, maybe even to hit him, to break the silence with any damn thing he can think of before he goes crazy.

“Herc –” he starts to say, unable to take it anymore.

“I’m not gonna thank you, Becket,” Herc cuts him off. And for what it’s worth, Raleigh doesn’t mind being interrupted, because at least Herc’s talking. He takes a slow, deep breath, pushes it out through his nose, and a muscle in his jaw jumps. He looks dangerous. “In fact, you should probably be thanking _me_ for not kicking your ass ten ways to Sunday right now.”

“I know –”

“Shut up.”

So Raleigh does.

Staring out at the trees, Herc shakes his head irately and goes on. “It’s unacceptable how long you’ve kept me in the dark about this…. I should have been the first bloody person you called, and you should have done it long before you packed him up and brought him out here.”

Even though Herc isn’t looking at him, Raleigh nods. This is the same shit he’s been telling himself since it happened, he’d just been too chicken to do it before Mako had arrived. He feels stupid and useless and like a complete jackass, and he just wishes there was a way he could make it up to Herc.

“So I’m not gonna thank you,” Herc says again. He turns finally, and he stares hard at Raleigh, like he means for his gaze to turn him to stone where he stands. “But… I am aware of what you’ve done to keep him alive… and I can appreciate that.”

Raleigh shakes his head now, and he murmurs a dismissive, “It’s nothing.”

Out of nowhere, Herc reaches for him. Raleigh flinches, expecting a blow, but Herc grabs both the collar of Raleigh’s jacket and his sweater, and he yanks them aside. Raleigh feels a shameful heat creep into his face as Herc looks at the bitemarks, old and new, peppering his neck. He knows there’s no way Herc can know that he likes it when Chuck bites him, that he gets off on it, even, but he keeps his gaze averted anyway, like he thinks Herc will be able to read his mind if their eyes meet.

Herc stares at the scars for a while, and his jaw visibly clenches once more, no doubt as he tries to take it all in. When he lets go and takes a step back, he heaves a sigh that makes him sound very, very old. “I don’t know what to think about all this,” he says.

After a pause to consider his response, Raleigh says, “We kinda just take it day by day.”

“Whatever he’s become, he’s still my son. And who knows where he’d be if you hadn’t taken him in.” He says this curtly and bitterly, like there’s a million other things he’d rather say to Raleigh. “So there it is – like I said, I ain’t gonna thank you, and I sure as hell don’t forgive you, but I’m not too proud to admit that.”

Raleigh nods again.

“I mean, shit, Becket – you dropped everything to take him in.”

“He needed help,” Raleigh says. Doesn’t point out that a part of the reason he’d taken Chuck in was to keep him from hurting anyone. He hadn’t done a very good job of it, can wake up in the middle of the day sometimes and still smell blood from having had to clean up so much of it. But he can’t tell Herc about that. He wants to, but he can’t. _That’s not all I did for Chuck – he murdered three people and I helped to cover it all up_ , doesn’t exactly seem like something that fits the moment, especially considering how angry Herc is at him. Chuck has to tell him about that. That’s his decision.

Herc gives a wry laugh at the small answer. He grabs Raleigh’s jacket again, only this time, he jerks him forward and crushes him into a hug that’s only a hug by name – it’s hard and painful, a cold gesture. He’s only doing it because he feels obligated to and has no idea what else he should do – he’s grateful, but angry. Incredibly angry. And at one point, he squeezes so hard that Raleigh thinks he intends to crush his ribs and constrict him to death.

But he doesn’t. He pulls back, and all but shoves Raleigh away from him. Then he pushes past him to go to the door. “Get inside before you freeze your balls off,” is all he says before he disappears.

And Raleigh lets out all of his breath, sagging against the porch railing. That could have gone _a lot_ worse, he thinks, all things considered.

 

*

 

In the kitchen, Chuck’s standing at the trash can to finish the blood bag. He hadn’t wanted to drink any of it while his father was there, but seeing Herc… it had made his stomach twist up and wither, had filled his head with cotton and smoke. Blood was the only thing he could think of to make himself feel better, even if it does taste like plastic.

He listens to the brusque, stilted conversation on the porch, even though he knows he probably shouldn’t, knows that Raleigh had given _him_ privacy. But Raleigh doesn’t have such heightened senses, and if he did, Chuck knows he would have eavesdropped too. He feels a strange tightness come to his chest when he hears what his father says – “He’s still my son,” – a human sensation that Chuck wishes he was too dead to feel. Sure, Herc says that now, but what happens when he finds out about all that Chuck’s done?

When Herc comes back inside, Chuck drops the empty bag into the trash and quickly wipes his mouth as thoroughly as he can. He’d already cleaned his face of the red mess that’d leaked out of his eyes – his father had pretended not to be freaked out by it, but he hadn’t been very good at it. And why not? You don’t see someone cry blood every day. “Whatever he’s become,” Herc had said. He’d become a monster, that’s what.

When he senses his father’s presence, he turns to find him standing in the doorway – he’s wringing his hands when Chuck faces him, but quickly lowers them to his sides and strikes a casual pose. Behind him, Raleigh passes by, heading for the stairs and not even looking at the kitchen – he’s doing his best to give Herc and Chuck time to be alone. And Chuck could bloody curse him. A part of him longs for Raleigh’s warmth and wishes that he could ask him to stay in the room with him, for moral support or whatever.

Herc shifts awkwardly, eyes searching the linoleum floor like he thinks he can find all of the answers there.

“So you looked at the bitemarks,” Chuck says, and he sounds more sardonic than he’d intended to, but it feels good. It’s easier to be a sarcastic little shit in this moment. “Saw what I can do.”

“You’re surviving. You have to do it,” Herc says shortly. He’s already ready to dismiss anything Chuck does because he’s just glad to have Chuck back in his life, and Chuck glares at him. A father’s love. But Chuck doesn’t want it, doesn’t deserve it.

“I don’t do it because I have to, I do it because I can’t control myself,” Chuck says. “And if Raleigh hadn’t been so willing to help me, I’d have probably killed him by now.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

Chuck laughs bitterly. “You always act like you know everything.”

“I know you aren’t –”

“A murderer?”

Herc falls silent and realization seeps into his expression. He scrubs a hand over his jaw and takes a deep breath like he’s trying to steady himself, and Chuck’s almost proud of himself for some stupid reason.

Malicious in his intent, Chuck says, “Three people.”

“I don’t need to hear this.”

“This is who I am now, you most certainly need to hear it. Either I treat Raleigh like my chew toy, or I kill people,” Chuck snaps. Frowning harder than Chuck’s ever seen before, Herc starts to move towards him, but Chuck backs away. “ _Don’t_. Don’t come near me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to – is that a good enough reason?” Chuck asks. He’d been weak when Herc had arrived, had let his father hold him and speak softly to him like he was a little boy all over again. It’d been nice, sure – his father had warmth that was different from Raleigh’s, but comforting and calming all the same – but the moment had passed. No more. “So you got what you came here for, yeah? Saw that I’m alive and well? Loosely speaking,” he adds as a murmur. “So now you can go home and not have to worry about your killer of a son.”

“I’m not going home,” Herc says. “I’m staying in town. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Lucky you.” Chuck rolls his eyes.

“I have Max with me, at the inn. I can bring him –”

“ _No_ ,” Chuck says quickly, frantically. The mere mention of his dog makes it feel like something sharp is being forced through his chest. At Herc’s questioning look, Chuck squares his shoulders again and tries to sound more casual than he feels. “I don’t think animals like me very much anymore….”

Herc’s voice gets a little softer as he says, “We won’t know unless –”

“Please,” Chuck says.

For a long moment, they just stand there in the kitchen, facing one another but not actually looking at each other, and though Herc looks like he wants nothing more than to go to Chuck, Chuck keeps his distance. His senses tell him that Raleigh’s pacing in the bedroom and that Mako’s been in the bathroom for the past hour – she’d run the water like she was taking a bath, but hadn’t actually filled the tub, is probably just standing at the door, waiting. 

Herc breaks the silence. “I have to go.”

 _Good_ , Chuck thinks.

His father moves to turn away, but then stops and looks back at Chuck. There’s a sudden steeliness to his face, a hard determination, and he says, “I don’t care what you are or what you’ve done. You are my son.” He emphasizes the words. They twist up Chuck’s dead heart and feel like a blow to the gut. “And I’m not going to lose you a second time.”

Chuck remains as Herc goes to get Mako to drive him back, and even as he listens to them both get into Raleigh’s truck, he doesn’t leave the kitchen. Red brims in his eyes and blurs his vision again as the truck pulls away from the cabin, but Chuck closes his eyes against it, cursing and feeling like he wants to tear something apart with his bare hands.

 

*

_All those things that you couldn’t say, you should’ve said._

_All those “I-love-yous” lost, weighed more like lead on your chest._

_If I could take back all those misspent days, every second of anger,_

_I would wash my sins away…_

_– “The Remembrance Ballad,” Atreyu_

*

 

“I told him. I bloody _told_ him.”

“Chuck –”

“Even now, he doesn’t listen to me.” Chuck spins away from the living room window, his eyes fiery and narrowed in his anger. “He brought Max.”

Even without supernatural hearing, Raleigh can hear the truck pulling up to the cabin. There are muffled thuds of the doors shutting, and Raleigh rubs at the back of his neck, averting his gaze. When he steals a glance back, Chuck’s eyebrows go up.

“You knew?”

“He might have mentioned that he was bringing him,” Raleigh says. And at the betrayed look on Chuck’s face, he hurriedly adds, “I didn’t have a choice, alright?” Which is true. Herc had called him earlier in the day only to say, ‘I’m bringing the fuckin’ dog,’ and what was Raleigh supposed to say? It isn’t his place to get between the Hansens – he’d done his part, the rest is up to them.

“Unbelievable,” Chuck says.

“Just calm down – we don’t even know what’s going to happen.”

“Should have expected you to side with my father.”

“That’s not fair.”

Chuck doesn’t get to respond – the front door opens and Herc and Mako come inside, by the sounds of it, kicking snow off their boots before they step into the foyer. Mako appears in the doorway first, smiling a little at Raleigh with cheeks flushed from the cold, but then she pitches a quick, apologetic frown at Chuck. Herc is there too, next, with Max on a leash, and Raleigh looks back at Chuck again, who’s expression is tight and strained.

“Couldn’t keep him cooped up at the inn all night,” Herc says, giving his son a guarded look. He reaches down and unhooks Max, who’s much thinner than the last time Raleigh had seen him, no doubt an effect of being without Chuck.

Chuck doesn’t say anything. Nobody does. At first, the bulldog is too busy shaking off snow and sniffing out his new surroundings to even notice Chuck, but when he does, he freezes up and cocks his head.

“Hey Max,” Chuck says, so softly it’s almost a whisper, with a very obviously feigned nonchalance.

Slowly, one step at a time, Max inches towards Chuck, his nose working as he sniffs. There’s a scent that just barely clings to Chuck, and always has since he reappeared, and Raleigh’s pretty sure it’s the scent of death, but it’s always been something out of reach, too faint for him to really pick up on or be bothered by it. But dogs have stronger senses, and it’s that scent that seems to be making Max nervous right now.

Chuck stands stock still, completely unmoving as Max reaches him, starts sniffing at his feet and ankles. Chuck moves like he means to lower a hand to the dog, probably for him to smell, but Max doesn’t take kindly to the sudden gesture – he turns and bolts out of the room as fast as he can, butt low to the floor like he’s trying to get his stubby tail between his legs. They all watch him go, Raleigh feeling a sharpness in his chest that he’s sure Herc knows all too well, and they can hear Max scampering around in the hall and kitchen.

Raleigh turns to Chuck again, whose expression has gone from unsure to distant and detached. His cold gaze goes right to Herc. “See? What’d I tell you?” he asks sardonically.

“Chuck –” Raleigh says.

“Give it some damn time –” Herc says.

But Chuck ignores the both of them, and he stalks coolly towards the doorway. Herc almost reaches for him, but Chuck tears himself away, anticipating it. “Don’t touch me,” he growls, and he pauses long enough to shoot his father a vicious look. “Think now maybe you lot will start listening to me?”

He storms from the room, and Mako calls out to him. As they hear the front door open, Herc makes a move to follow, but Raleigh lunges towards the hall.

“I’ll go,” he says.

It seems as though Herc wants to argue right away but he looks at Mako and his expression loses some of its heat – like he’s fine with it because he trusts her judgement. He nods once, shoulders relaxing, and Raleigh and Mako share a look before he leaves the room. He grabs his coat from the hook on the wall, and pulls it on as he steps outside onto the porch.

It’s not snowing, not yet at least, but the cold is bitter and sharp. After he pulls the door shut, Raleigh pulls his hat from the pocket of his jacket, and he shoves it on in a rush, looking around. Chuck’s nowhere in sight, but even a vampire leaves footprints. And as Raleigh follows said footprints, he works out in his mind what he wants to say to Chuck – god knows he doesn’t want to make any of this worse.

The trail leads into the woods, but it doesn’t go very far; a small clearing with a dirty frozen pond nearby. Chuck’s just standing there when Raleigh comes through the trees, facing the way that Raleigh had come, arms at his sides and looking like a statue. It’s surreal, seeing him standing there in just his T-shirt, his skin nearly as pale as the white on the ground.

“You barrel around in there like a clumsy, injured moose, you know?” he says by way of greeting, the words coming out harsher than Raleigh would have expected.

“We can’t all have your agility and stealth,” Raleigh says, breathless from the cold.

“Generally speaking, when someone storms off and goes for a walk outside, they probably want to be left the hell alone.”

“Generally speaking, they aren’t vampires I’m in love with.”

Chuck sputters a little, seemingly taken aback, not by the profession of love, but by how casually Raleigh says it. Then he rolls his eyes and puts his hands on his hips, turning away. “Let me guess, you’re sorry. You can’t imagine what this is like for me. You wish you could take it all away,” he says sarcastically.

Raleigh smirks a little, stopping next to Chuck. “That’s half of it.”

“And the other half?” Chuck glances at him, confused.

“You need to cool down and try again. With Max,” Raleigh says.

“Are you joking with me right now? Did you miss the part where he ran away from me?”

“Come on, you had to have known it wasn’t going to be instant,” Raleigh says. “I get the feeling you aren’t even trying.”

Chuck looks at Raleigh again, frowning, and then he lowers his gaze almost shamefully. “After everything… don’t you think it’d be better if everyone just left me alone?”

“No,” Raleigh says simply. “Look, I get it – you don’t want to hurt anyone else. You want to push your father away to keep him safe. You want to do what every broody vampire in any movie does.”

“I’m not broody –”

“But I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.” Raleigh moves closer to Chuck, stands in front of him and ducks to try and meet Chuck’s gaze. “Maybe everything that happened was because you needed _this_. Maybe none of it would have happened if you’d had it the whole time.”

Chuck shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but it’s a weak gesture. He looks so young suddenly, and it truly hits Raleigh then, that Chuck is still just a kid. He had died before he could really grow up, before he could even experience something akin to a normal life. And now he’s a vampire forced to live in seclusion, wanting to push away his last surviving family for fear of hurting them.

A surge of protectiveness washes over Raleigh.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asks quietly.

“Shut up.”

“Will you try again?”

“You saw what happened…. It ain’t gonna work.”

“Will you try again?” Raleigh repeats the question. And then, with a little smile, he adds, “For me?”

“Oh, you think you can get whatever you want by flashing your stupid little smile around, do you?” Chuck grumps.

Chuck looks down at his feet and kicks at the snow moodily. “Yeah, alright. I hear you.”

“You trust me, right?”

“Shut up,” Chuck says again.

Raleigh’s smirk grows a little, and he says, “You can do it later, okay? When no one else is around.”

“Except you.”

“Except me.” Shoving his hands into his coat pockets, Raleigh takes a quick breath, and he bounces a little as though to try and generate some body heat. “Can we go back now? I’m still just a weak human when it comes to these sorts of temperatures, you know.”

“I think I’m gonna stay out here a while,” Chuck says. At Raleigh’s look, he goes on, “Don’t worry – I think I can handle myself. I’ve been all over these woods to look for good places to hide things we never want to see again.”

Raleigh catches his drift, and his smile falters. He means the places where he hid the bodies, of course – Chuck had never told him what he’d done with them, but there really weren’t many options out here. Raleigh shifts uncomfortably and throws the briefest of glances around, like he expects one of the unmarked graves to jump out at him. He feels Chuck stare at him for a long moment, but he keeps his gaze averted, feeling like Chuck’s waiting for something, something that Raleigh doesn’t want to provide him with. When he finally does look up again, Chuck is skeptical.

“You keep trying to forget, don’t you? That I killed people….”

“ _Yes_ ,” Raleigh says quickly, a little forcefully. “No amount of reflecting on any of it will bring them back.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t just sweep it all up under a pretty rug and pretend it ain’t there.”

“It’s a waste of time to –”

“It’s who I am,” Chuck says firmly. “Look at you… trying to be all high and mighty about my old man being here. You want me to face this, to be bloody ‘patient’ and willing to try and fix things – and you can’t even face the most important thing about me.”

“And what’s that?”

“That I’m a monster.” Chuck continues to stare hard at Raleigh, his eyes narrowed and intense, and Raleigh bites the inside of his cheek, not knowing how to respond. Chuck doesn’t even blink as he goes on, “You liking how it feels when I suck your blood makes it easy for you to pretend, but I can’t. It’s always there for me, Ray. Beneath the surface of my skin, like ground up pieces of glass. This urge to kill, to maim. I touch your skin and my first instinct is to tear it off of you….”

Raleigh blinks. Takes a slow, even breath and tries to keep his expression blank and casual. Truthfully, Chuck’s words chill him far more than the Alaska weather ever could, makes it feel like his intestines have turned into a whole chunk of ice that sits hard and heavy in him. This is all of the stuff Raleigh had chosen not to think about, things he’d shoved into the deepest, darkest corners of his mind, buried beneath everything else. Because despite everything between them, despite how much Raleigh loves Chuck, there is a part of him that fears him.

And Chuck knows it. He looks both smug and dismayed by Raleigh’s reaction.

“You wouldn’t,” Raleigh finally says. 

“But it doesn’t change the fact that I could. At any moment. I could snap and you could be gone in an instant, before I even realized what I was doing. So maybe me pushing my father away isn’t the worst idea of the century, yeah? Maybe you, him, and Mako should just leave me alone out here.”

Raleigh shakes his head, jaw clenching, but words fail him.

Finally, Chuck looks away from him. He turns and takes a few steps away, opening the breach between them. “Go,” he says. “You’re turning blue, you idiot.”

Raleigh starts to walk away, but then says, “You killed those people because you were starved for blood. You killed them because I couldn’t take better care of you.”

“You have no idea –”

“But I can – and am – now. And so can your father,” Raleigh says firmly. “You were just telling me that you need me, that you don’t want to be parted from me, and now you’re trying to convince me to leave you?”

“I’m trying to keep you safe, you moron,” Chuck says.

“No, you’re scared. And you know what? That’s okay, because so am I,” Raleigh says. “But pushing people away and constantly beating yourself up for stuff that was beyond your control is not going to solve your problems. At least I’m trying.”

Chuck snorts. Shakes his head.

“You know I’m right.”

“Shut up,” Chuck says once more.

On his way back, Raleigh doesn’t want to think about Chuck’s words. He’s right, of course – he _is_ a monster. One capable of terrible and brutal things. And when he teases Raleigh, when Raleigh gets a fleeting glimpse of those boyish dimples, it makes him all too willing to want to forget that, to ignore that bad in favor of the good. If only Raleigh had known then what he knows now, if he’d just been more careful, he could have tamed Chuck’s bloodlust sooner, somehow. Hindsight is 20/20, they say.  

Back at the cabin, a very weary-looking Herc is sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over with his elbow propped on the surface, a hand shielding his eyes. Max is at his feet, drinking from a bowl of water, and Mako stands beside the fridge, leaning back against the counter. She straightens when Raleigh enters the kitchen, and Herc lowers his hand to look up at him – they both look hopeful and expectant in their own ways.

Mako offers a small smile. And it’s enough to ease the weight on Raleigh’s chest a little bit. Thank god he has her back in his life, he thinks.

For a long moment, Herc watches him. He almost looks incredulous, like he’s seeing Raleigh for the first time, and Raleigh pretends not to notice as he drapes his coat over one of the other chairs. He can feel the scrutiny in Herc’s intent, wonders if Herc is just now starting to contemplate Raleigh and Chuck’s relationship, and he’s almost guilty about it.

“He talks to you so candidly?” Herc finally asks.

Raleigh shrugs. “More like I’ve gotten better at reading him.”

“You did what I never could, then.”

And it sounds like both a praise and a curse at the same time.

It’s late when Chuck returns – really late. Herc’s passed out in the armchair in the living room, while Raleigh and Mako are on the couch together watching the grainy television. Max is on the floor between them, but stands up as the front door opens, his ears perking up. It’s obvious that Chuck’s trying to be quiet, and though he passes the archway of the living room, it’s quick, like he doesn’t want anyone to see him. He goes to the kitchen, and Mako glances at Raleigh. They nod at one another, not needing to speak, and Raleigh climbs to his feet.

He doesn’t take Max with him right away. Instead he grabs the empty coffee mug held loosely in Herc’s hand, moments away from falling to the floor, and he makes his way into the kitchen alone. When he flips the light switch, Chuck’s just standing in the center of the room, like he’s braced for a fight, and he doesn’t at all look like someone who’s just spent the past few hours out in the cold – if not for the iron-like smell and the chill clinging to him, you’d never know he’d been outside at all.

“Almost started to think you weren’t coming back,” Raleigh says lightly, setting the mug in the sink.

“You’d probably be better off, you know,” Chuck says. He looks at Raleigh sheepishly, and he says, “But I wouldn’t.” And Raleigh knows that that’s the closest Chuck will ever come to admitting that Raleigh was right.

“You ready for Max?”

“Christ, you don’t let up, do you?”

“Wait here.”

“Don’t reckon I have much of a choice.”

It’s easy to get Max out of the living room. Raleigh walks, hunched over so that he can hold onto the bulldog’s collar with one hand, while the other rubs all along Max’s back and shoulders soothingly. Mako watches from the couch, darting little looks at Herc every now and then like she and Raleigh are children doing something wrong, waiting to get caught by the designated adult.

“Come on. Come and see Chuck with me,” Raleigh says genially, easing the dog into the hallway.

Max begins to think it’s some sort of game – he wags his tail and leans into Raleigh’s touch happily. But when they reach the doorway of the kitchen, where Chuck is still standing in the same spot, Max comes to a stop.

“It’s okay,” Raleigh says, patting Max’s shoulders.

Slowly, Chuck lowers himself to his knees to make himself smaller, his eyes fixed on his dog. Max starts pushing against Raleigh’s legs, like he means to escape and go back to the living room. So Chuck extends one of his hands, and in a voice that’s a lot more uncertain and tentative than Raleigh knows he’d like, he says, “C’mere, boy. Stop being such a baby.”

Max cocks his head a little and stops trying to get away. He stares at Chuck, confused, and Chuck glances up briefly to catch Raleigh’s eye. Raleigh gives him a single nod, meant to be heartening, and Chuck looks back at Max, his jaw tightening in determination. _Patient_ , Raleigh thinks.

For a long moment, nothing happens. Chuck wiggles his fingers a little, and Max starts to move again – he takes a slow step forward. And then another. Raleigh lets go of him and watches, holding his breath, as Max creeps closer and closer to Chuck. Chuck is unmoving, but there’s a look of mingled desperation and hope on his face. He stretches his hand out some more, and Max hesitates at the sudden movement. But only for a second.

And then he’s close enough that he can sniff Chuck’s hand. His nose presses against Chuck’s skin like he wants to get as good a scent as he can, and he sniffs up Chuck’s arm, moving closer and looking like he’s growing more and more sure about it all. Chuck hesitantly tries to pat Max’s head – and Max lets him. The utterly blissful look that comes to Chuck’s face is priceless, and a relieved little noise stirs in his throat as Max’s tail starts to wag. It’s slow at first, but as Chuck pets him more, it wags faster, and before Raleigh knows it, Max is trying to climb into Chuck’s lap, his whole body shaking with how hard the tail’s moving.

Chuck wraps his arms around Max and pulls him close, and Max licks at his face. Raleigh’s chest feels so tight that it almost hurts, but it’s a good hurt – Chuck’s grinning, looking boyish and youthful, and it’s something that before, Raleigh would have sold his soul to see. Chuck is in his own little world with Max, as though nothing else exists, and he buries his face in the dog’s fur with a low laugh.

Raleigh flinches when there’s sudden movement to his left, and he turns to find Herc, bleary-eyed and inquisitive. His gaze lands on Chuck, and his face goes through a gamut of emotions, from anxious to surprised to relieved, and his mouth curves up into a small, aged smile. He glances at Raleigh, and for just a second, they stare at one another. Then he nods. And Raleigh knows it’s not Herc forgiving him, not entirely, but it’s enough.

All but beaming, Raleigh turns back to the scene before him. Chuck may technically be a monster, and maybe Raleigh needs to comprehend that. But for as long as they’ve been in Alaska, this is the most human Chuck has ever looked.

 

*

_How could I know that you would take my breath away?_

_And how could I know that one kiss would change everything?_

_– “Nevada’s Grace,” Atreyu_

*

 

Nobody tries to talk about the Max thing, and for that, Chuck is glad. Things might have gone well – really, _really_ well – but that doesn’t mean Chuck wants to discuss it. He doesn’t even want to acknowledge it, really. He’d like to pretend that his dog, the animal that had been his only friend growing up, hadn’t been completely terrified of what he’d become, thanks.

His father’s visits become somewhat routine. He comes by every evening with Max, and he hangs around until just a few hours before sunrise. He ends up getting a rental truck, something that can handle the snow as good as Raleigh’s, and though Chuck’s sure he’s spending too much money to keep his room at the inn in town, Herc never mentions it. And as the days wear on, Chuck starts to feel more and more, well… alive.

He’d never admit it because that would mean Raleigh had been right, and though he knows that Raleigh already knows that, he certainly doesn’t want to drive the point home. But he can’t remember the last time he’d ever felt so at peace, and more importantly, he can’t remember the last time Raleigh’s smile had seemed so easy. It’s like there was a dark cloud hanging over Raleigh all of these months, and with Mako and Herc there, it lessens, and Chuck’s able to see how much straighter he stands, as though he’s not being weighed down by a burden anymore.

And with Max and his father, Chuck’s better able to distract himself from thoughts he’d rather not have – memories of bloodstains on hardwood and the sound of flesh ripping. He can’t forget the people he’s killed, and he shouldn’t even be able to – he _should_ have to carry that guilt with him for the rest of his existence, however long that turns out to be since they still don’t know the full effects of his ‘condition.’ It’s only fair he remember them. But maybe in trying to better himself, maybe if he never hurts another human being again, he can seek some sort of atonement for it all.

It takes about a week for Herc to broach the subject of returning to Australia.

He and Chuck are alone at the cabin – save for Max, of course – and Raleigh and Mako are in town, stocking up on groceries, since now they’re feeding three humans and a dog. Chuck’s sitting on the floor in the living room, his back against the couch, with Max draped across his legs while he watches TV. The dog doesn’t at all look comfortable in this position, but the minute Herc and he arrive each day, he becomes glued to Chuck and never leaves his side. And Chuck would sooner set himself on fire than complain about it, mind you, because now he’s got his best friend back.

He hears Herc come into the room from where he’d been in the kitchen, cleaning the coffeemaker that was on its last leg. Chuck knows the old man’s about to get serious, because he sort of just stands inside the doorway for a long moment, silent and staring.

And then he says, very simply, “There’re some loose ends back home I reckon I ought to tie up.”

Chuck hesitates as he pets Max, but he doesn’t look up. “Fun,” he murmurs.

Herc is quiet again, infuriatingly so. He stands there some more, saying nothing, and it really starts to grate on Chuck’s nerves. He and his father have never been good at talking to each other – mostly because every time they’d tried before, it had turned into them yelling at each other – but you’d think that one of them dying and coming back would have changed that.

“Was thinking you could come back with me….” Herc finally says.

Chuck gives an incredulous shake of his head. “What for?”

“It’s home.”

“Not for me. Not anymore.”

Herc pushes out all of his breath on a low sigh, and that just annoys Chuck further. He turns, looking up at his father at last, and he lets his eyebrows go up. _Just spit it out already_ , he thinks harshly. Herc lowers his gaze, brings his hands up to his hips, and when he speaks again, it’s slow and careful, like he’s afraid of offending Chuck.

“Look… I can appreciate Raleigh looking out for you as long as he has.” He pauses and Chuck steels his jaw, returning his gaze to the television. “The things he’s done to take care of you – it can’t have been easy on either of you. But now I’m here and now I can take care of you –”

“Let me stop you right there,” Chuck says. He nudges Max off of him and climbs to his feet in a fluid and graceful motion. Herc straightens his shoulders like he’s getting ready for a fight – old habits die hard, Chuck reckons – but Chuck keeps his distance. “I need Raleigh. That’s all there is to it,” he says.

Herc seems conflicted, his expression hard. He looks around the living room, gesturing like Chuck’s never seen the bloody place before, like he hasn’t been living there for the past few months. “Do you really think this is good for you? Being out here in seclusion like –”

“Seclusion keeps me from hurting anyone,” Chuck snaps. Which isn’t entirely true, given his victims, but Chuck’s well aware that if they’d remained somewhere like Kowloon Bay, or even if Raleigh had picked some place closer to Fairbanks, the body count would be a lot higher.

“He keeps you here like a prisoner.”

“He keeps me _safe_.”

Quiet, Herc studies him like he’s the most complex puzzle he’s ever seen in his life. “I just want what’s best for you, son.”

And there’s that word. _Son_. It makes Chuck’s gut twist up into a painful knot, and he rolls his eyes. He turns to pace away, needing to look anywhere but at Herc. He knows his father loves him – knew it even when they were going through their roughest of patches – but this isn’t how he’s ever talked to him. Chuck doesn’t know how to go along with it, it makes his skin crawl uncomfortably.

“I lost you once…. Want to make sure I’m doing all I can to keep you this time,” Herc adds slowly. The words almost sound like they hurt, like they claw their way up his throat and force themselves out of his mouth on their own.

And if he were human, Chuck knows his face would be on fire in his awkward embarrassment. Christ – he’d already broken down and cried in front of his father, what more did Herc want from him? How did normal people talk like this with their family? How did other people find it so easy to get so emotional with people?

“Raleigh’s what’s best for me,” Chuck says stiffly.

Again, there’s a silence that covers them like a thick blanket of snow, and Herc stares at Chuck, tries to read him front to back. Suddenly, he cracks a weary smile. “That’s something I never could have imagined hearing you say,” he remarks.

Yeah, Chuck would definitely be blushing if he could. He makes a scoffing noise in his throat, rolling his eyes again and looking away once more. “Shut up.”

His obvious embarrassment isn’t lost on Herc, and Herc’s not an idiot. He sees right through Chuck, and he shakes his head, looking amused and surprised at the same time. “You and Raleigh…. I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.”

“Oh _god_ ,” Chuck groans, feeling fourteen years old all over again. “If you want me to admit there’s something between me and him, fine, I admit it, but please stop talking. For the love of all that is holy in this world, _stop_.”

Herc listens – he stops talking. But he also crosses the room to Chuck and pulls him into an embrace that still feels awkward on the both of them, and Chuck doesn’t have time to get out a protest. He groans again, exasperated, and returns the hug very loosely before pulling himself away.

“Please tell me that’s not going to become a normal occurrence,” Chuck says.

“Give me a break, already,” Herc says. “So I get it, alright? You’re not going anywhere without him…. I’ll accept that. He could come with us, then.”

Chuck is touched by the offer, truly. He softens his expression some like he wants his father to know that, but at the same time, he says, “I don’t want to go back. I like it here, I like what I’ve got going on here. And the more you hound me to return, the more I want to stay.”

“Unsurprising. You always were stubborn,” Herc says.

Max is then at Chuck’s feet, giving a low, lazy bark, and out of instinct, Chuck drops to his knees to give him some attention. After a moment, he looks back up at his father, who’s watching him with a look on his face that makes Chuck feel strangely nostalgic, a tender look that Herc quickly tries to cover with one of indifference.

“So has he always smelled this bad or am I just now noticing it with my new senses?” Chuck asks, and god help him, there’s a bit of playfulness to his tone.

Herc barks out a surprised laugh, and despite it all, despite _everything_ , Chuck smiles.

 

*

 

Something changed, and Raleigh doesn’t know what it was. All he knows is that when he and Mako got back to the cabin, the air felt lighter and easier, and Chuck didn’t seem nearly as tense as he’d been the past few days. But despite his curiosity at what had changed between father and son, Raleigh doesn’t ask – he knows it’s not his place.

He’s dressing the bed with clean sheets when Chuck comes into the room, ready to die for the day. Herc and Max are staying the night, though it wasn’t really something that had been discussed. Herc had kind of just gotten comfortable in the chair while Mako lay on the couch, and nothing had even been said. Raleigh certainly doesn’t mind, and he knows that if Chuck did, Chuck would say something about it – he’s not exactly the sort of guy to keep quiet when something bothers him, of course.

“Your father doesn’t seem to hate me as much anymore,” Raleigh says. He glances at him. “Your doing?” 

Chuck shrugs, and averts his gaze. “I guess.”

Raleigh finishes with the bed sheet and straightens, turning to face Chuck head-on. Chuck still seems somewhat embarrassed, not meeting Raleigh’s gaze, and that’s when it hits Raleigh. “He knows, doesn’t he?” he asks, and he looks quickly at the closed door like he expects Herc to come barreling in any minute to beat him down for touching his only kid.

“Not all the details,” Chuck says. 

“No wonder he’s so relaxed; he’s got plans. Well, it was nice knowing you.”

Chuck smirks. “He’s not gonna kill you. You mind if we stop talking about my father, though?” He’s suddenly right in front of Raleigh, grabbing him and pulling him down onto the bed.

Raleigh struggles, voicing some protest. “We can’t –”

“I know, I know. Just lay with me.”

So Raleigh does. He’s on his back, with Chuck curled up against his side, visibly growing more and more lethargic as the moments pass. It will never stop fascinating Raleigh how Chuck’s body reacts to the sun – and there’s still so much he doesn’t know about Chuck’s condition. And for what it’s worth, Chuck almost seems like he’s just as captivated by Raleigh. Weakly, he laces his fingers with Raleigh’s and turns Raleigh’s hand over and over, back and forth, studying it.

“How can you stand it? Your skin being so hot all the time?”

“Can you really not remember what it’s like being alive?” Raleigh teases.

Chuck shakes his head, still staring at Raleigh’s hand. “Reckon I’ve always been cold-blooded…. Childhood like mine.”

“Maybe I’m just really good at tolerating it, then,” Raleigh says, to answer the initial question.

Chuck smirks. “Could use some of that tolerance myself. The clashing smells in this house are driving me up the bloody wall.”

“What’s it all smell like?”

“Mako’s like metal. But not rust or anything – iron or steel,” Chuck says after pausing to think about his answer, and his eyes shut like he can’t keep them open any longer. “The old man smells almost like burning wood, like a hearth. And Max just smells like a dog – it’s disgusting.”

Raleigh laughs. “And me?” he asks.

Chuck makes an indistinct noise in his throat but doesn’t respond right away. It seems like he’s passed out. Shortly, he says, “I don’t know. Different. Hard to explain.”

“That’s not a fair answer,” Raleigh says, still grinning even though Chuck’s eyes are closed.

Chuck grunts. Then slowly, he says, “Home…. That’s what you smell like.”

And then he’s gone. Shut down like a computer being unplugged, becoming a cold and heavy weight beside Raleigh. And Raleigh, after pulling his hand out of Chuck’s tight, almost unbreakable grasp, gets comfortable and glances towards the window, where light is just starting to press against the curtains.

 _Home_ , he echoes in his mind. He finds that he likes the sound of that.

 

*

_And I would stand, stand by your side,_

_Until the sun turns the sky all the colors I see in your eyes._

_– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu_

*

 

In all the time that he and Raleigh had been there, the cabin had never smelled like this.

Jumble of personal scents aside, when Chuck wakes up that December evening, the house is nearly overpowered with the smell of a big breakfast. Bacon, pancakes, eggs – the whole nine yards. As a human, the smell would have made his mouth water, but as a vampire, it almost disgusts Chuck. He takes his time getting out of bed, even though he isn’t groggy in the least and never needs any time to actually wake up. The only thing that even convinces him to leave the room is the sound of Raleigh’s laugh from downstairs, which stirs something fluttery in Chuck’s chest that makes him suddenly not care about the scent of greasy food.

When he reaches the kitchen, he finds he’s in time to see Raleigh and Herc cleaning up after the meal. Raleigh’s at the sink, washing dishes, and Herc’s drying and putting them away. It’s all so very domestic that it almost turns Chuck’s stomach more than the smells do. Mako’s sitting at the table with a newspaper and pen in front of her, and she’s the first to notice Chuck’s arrival, glancing up at him and smiling warmly.

“Good morning, Chuck,” she greets him. She’s the only one who says ‘good morning’ anymore, since Raleigh’s trained himself to say ‘evening’ instead, and for some reason, Chuck kind of likes it. It’s like a small form of rebellion.

His father and Raleigh turn to him, greeting him in their own way – a nod and “There you are,” from Herc, and a roguish grin from Raleigh – and Max appears from where he’d been hidden under the table at Mako’s feet, no doubt still waiting for scraps even though they were cleaning up. He bounds to Chuck, sniffing at his feet and legs like he always does when he sees Chuck, like he’s got to make sure it’s really him, and Chuck bends to give the dog a few scratches behind the ear.

“You lot look like you belong on a sitcom,” Chuck says as he takes a seat across from Mako.

“You love it,” she says.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Raleigh says.

“The hell’s got all of you in such a good mood?” Chuck asks, looking between the three of them. “Feel like I woke up in the Twilight Zone.”

Mako and Herc share a glance that’s almost apprehensive. “Breaking news to Chuck -- isn’t that Raleigh’s job?” Herc asks, and Mako laughs.

Raleigh turns away from the sink long enough to briefly catch Chuck’s gaze, and then he says, “Your dad and Mako are going to be staying.”

“Going to be?” Chuck repeats. “I kinda got that after the past couple of days.”

“No, I mean for good,” Raleigh says.

Chuck glances at Herc to see if it’s true, and Herc nods. “ _Here_?” Chuck asks skeptically. Mako’s slept on the couch long enough that he’s sure she’s sick of it, and there’s no way his father can live on the armchair.

“I’ve been house hunting,” Mako says, tapping the newspaper with the pen. “And I think I’ve found a place big enough for all of us – including Max.”

“All of us….” It’s like they’re all speaking in an ancient tongue that Chuck can’t even begin to grasp, and he looks between them again, his brow furrowing. “Like… _together_?”

“One big happy family, yeah?” Herc asks. And while Chuck’s still processing it, his father goes on to say, “Was thinking I could get a job at the hospital even. Bring in more, ah, blood for you.”

“I could too,” Mako says. And then she shrugs. “In principle.”

Chuck blinks a few times and shifts in the chair, feeling like he needs to take a long, deep breath, and wishing that he had the ability to. There’s a sort of warmth that’s growing in his chest, expanding and inflating like a balloon. Gratitude? No, it feels stronger than that. He doesn’t know how to take it, wishes he was back in the bedroom, or even in the attic.

“Unless you don’t want it,” Mako says quickly.

The room goes silent, and Chuck stares at the table to avoid the way the others stare at him. He can feel their gazes burning into him, can feel Raleigh’s in particular, expectant and waiting for his reaction.

And surprising even himself, he shakes his head and says, “No, no – I do. I’d… I’d like that.”

Mako flashes a radiant smile, then goes back to the paper, and Herc looks pleased, turning away to put away a pot that Raleigh’s just finished washing. And Raleigh looks at Chuck like he thinks Chuck’s the reason the world keeps spinning – he looks at Chuck in the way that only he knows how, the way that makes Chuck feel for a split second that he has warm blood pumping through his veins instead of ice.

And then Raleigh turns back around to finish with the dishes.

One big happy family. It sounds stupid, but rings true, Chuck thinks. With the warm weight of Max pressing against his legs, Mako humming under her breath, and the sound of their combined heartbeats a constant in Chuck’s ears – it feels right to think of them like that.

He laughs a little. And that feels right too.

 

*

_Just live and breathe, try not to die again…._

_– “The Crimson,” Atreyu_

*

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a long time coming. I started this fic waaay back and had actually been aiming to post it around Halloween (to match with the whole vampire theme -- which, as you can see now that it's February, didn't happen, hah). It's given me nothing but trouble, and there were actually a lot of times that I almost gave up entirely on it. I may not have finished at all if not for the support and encouragement from my followers on Tumblr -- I sincerely hope you all enjoy this story, and I'm so sorry it took me so long to finally finish it. <3


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